


yet astronomic fountains exit from the heart

by beverlymarshian



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Angst, Everybody Lives, Happy Ending, Injury, M/M, Pining, Sexual Content, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-14
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:21:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23645326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beverlymarshian/pseuds/beverlymarshian
Summary: The year was 2250. The U.S.S. Dauntless’ maiden voyage was meant to be a routine, if lengthy, mission to investigate a cosmic anomaly picked up by Starfleet’s long-range sensors. It was also the first mission for newly-minted Captain Beverly Marsh and her crew.Dr. Richie Tozier, a well-regarded astrophysicist despite his more controversial work on the existence of one or more “mirrorverses”, was absolutely not going to join Bev after their last mission together. He wasn’t sure how he ended up on the bridge of the Dauntless, bickering with their new chief medical officer. Reddie-centric Star Trek AU.
Relationships: Audra Phillips/OFC, Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Comments: 32
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Good morning everyone, this is your author speaking. A few preliminary notes:
> 
> • Relationships: eventual Reddie, eventual Stanpat, eventual Benverly, eventual Audra/OFC, established Hanbrough.  
> • Fic Length: 60k+  
> • FCs: Kiki Layne as Patty, Samira Wiley as Audra  
> • Eventual minor spoilers for early episodes of Star Trek: Discovery  
> • title from sylvia plath’s trio of love songs  
> • Alpha Shifts: 0600-1200 ; Beta Shifts 1200-1800 ; Gamma Shifts: 1800 - 0000 ; Delta Shifts: 0000 - 0600
> 
> CWs: non-major character death, injury, and non-graphic depictions of violence (all what would be typical of a Star Trek film), discussion of aviophobia. Additional CWs for specific content will be attached to chapters.
> 
> If you like, you can follow me at my brand new clown town twitter acct @beverlymarshian for updates on my tortured writing process and other shenanigans. That’s all for now, folks.
> 
> For Christina. Thanks for the soundtrack. Taika ain’t got nothing on you.

_Stardate 2250.99 | 0700 hours_

When Bev asked Richie to be her chief science officer aboard the U.S.S. Dauntless, Richie laughed so hard he puked. In his defence, they were several shots deep at a seedy bar they had not frequented since their academy days. And boy, did time romanticize the fuck out of the Bar at the End of the Universe. Calling the place a dive was flattering. Richie’s puke may have improved the odour.

Bev did not bring it up again that night. Instead she laughed at Richie, threw him some napkins, and got him another drink. They celebrated her captaincy until Richie woke up on Bev’s couch at 1600 hours the next day with a miniature demon stabbing a pitchfork into his temporal lobes.

Richie did not think about it again until he had finally shaken the vestiges of the hangover from hell later that week. He was, predictably, bothering Stan, who was on a short leave while the U.S.S. Concordia was docked for maintenance. Turns out, Stan’s leave was not so short at all—he had accepted a post on the U.S.S. Dauntless, at Bev’s request.

He and Stan had not worked together since the academy, likely by design. They were not _troublemakers_ , per se. You were not a troublemaker if you never actually _got_ in trouble, right? But the fourth year flight simulators did not install malicious Galaga software themselves, just like the third year exams did not originally include an ABBA-related bonus essay.

Stan was disappointed when Richie said he was going to stay on desk duty, but he did not push the issue. Richie had been on desk duty since he and Bev were on the U.S.S Gaia together. One intergalactic scandal was enough for one year.

Still, he was excited for Stan. He already had a Chief Navigator position aboard the Concordia—youngest in history, as Richie told anyone who would listen—so the Dauntless was not exactly an upgrade. It was, however, a prototype for the new Emissary-class vessels, designed for speed and stealth, equipped with high-grade scanning technology and, most importantly for Stan, with the most modern navigation technology in the Federation. Stan refused to even intimate his degree of involvement in designing the navigation systems on the Emissaries, so of course Richie started telling everyone Stan was the mastermind.

Richie had unequivocally decided not to accept the post on the Dauntless. He would stay on his extended shore leave, thoroughly nocturnal, buried in his office with nothing but his research and his weed, trying to find a reputable, peer-reviewed journal that would at least _consider_ publishing his latest paper. He would take another posting, on a less awesome spaceship with a less awesome captain, when the time was right.

So Richie was as surprised as anyone to find himself, dressed in his regulation blues, on the bridge of the U.S.S. Dauntless at the asscrack of dawn on its launch date. He could not tell whether Bev or Stan looked more smug, so he tried not to look at either of them. Assholes.

“Good morning Dr. Tozier, I’m glad to see you looking so…fresh,” Bev said, biting back a smile. Stan snorted.

“Smart, funny, _and_ handsome? I really am the whole package,” Richie says, winking heavily at Bev. Captain Marsh. That was going to be odd. Not because it didn’t suit her, but because he and Stan had called her Captain Marsh as a joke since they met her. It wasn’t as fun now that she was actually a captain.

Another person on the bridge snorted. Loudly. Not one to have his honour impugned, Richie sought the source of the sound. Near the bridge entrance stood another science officer—medical, by his insignia—whose raised eyebrows made his forehead crinkle and whose lips were twisted smugly. He barely came up to Richie’s chin, so instead of looking mean, he kind of just looked cute.

“You, baby, can call me Richie,” he said, winking at the medical officer.

The man frowned quickly, “It’s Dr. Kaspbrak. Aren’t you that astrophysicist who writes about conspiracy theories?”

Dr. Kaspbrak. That was familiar. “Yeah? What about it? Aren’t you the space doctor that’s scared of space?”

“Of course I’m scared of space. _You_ should be scared of space. We should ALL be scared of space!” Dr. Kaspbrak said, raising his voice.

Richie laughed, which only seemed to make him more angry. “Dude, it’s just space. It’s cool.”

“Oh yeah, it’s so cool. As in, literally freezing cold. What’s there to love about a heatless void that takes every opportunity to kill us?”

“God, man, you’re right. I know all about heatless voids. I fucked your mom last night.”

Dr. Kaspbrak was flushed from his throat up to his cheekbones. “My mom is _dead_ , you asshole.”

“Oh, well I’m glad I —“

Bev cleared her throat loudly, not letting Richie finish. That was probably for the best. “Richie, stop flirting. Dr. Kaspbrak is an excellent doctor who has agreed to serve as our chief medical officer _as a favour to me_.”

Richie smiled sheepishly at her and nodded, “Yes, Captain Marsh.”

When Bev looked away, he winked at Dr. Kaspbrak. He got a scowl in return. Making friends already.

Richie did not need to be on the bridge for lift-off. He had his department and equipment set up and ready for use at his convenience. And not to mention all the _new toys_ he didn’t even have access to on Earth. Richie would keep telling himself he got aboard this godforsaken starship for the new tech.

Or even his sweet digs! He had seen his room, and it was quite a step up from the officer bunks. No roommate, a little space to work, and an in-room coffee replicator. He even had a _shower_ in his room. It was not a water shower, of course, but it would be nice to be able to decide when to shower instead of relying on the raffle for a decent timeslot.

Richie had always loved take-off, from the simulations to his first time on a Federation vessel. The Dauntless would be hitting warp almost as soon as it was out of Earth’s atmosphere, which was an even more compelling sight to see.

“Good Morning Everyone, this is your Captain speaking.” Bev’s clear, steady voice filled the bridge as she opened a ship-wide channel.

“Welcome to the USS Dauntless. I am Beverly Marsh and I am excited and proud to be your captain. I understand that there is a lot of . . . attention on this mission. I assure you that all I want is your effort and your love of the stars.

This is a mission of unknown duration. I know that must have been a hard decision to make. I thank you for making it. I hope we can get you home to your families as quickly as possible.

You have your mission briefs. We are travelling to the border between the Alpha and Delta Quadrants near a little planet called KN-1-3-9. Starfleet’s long-range sensors picked up a cosmic anomaly slowly growing in size near this planet. Our mission is simple: collect data from and identify the cosmic anomaly, assess its risks, and evaluate the viability of KN-1-3-9 as a potential Federation outpost. Along the way, we have several stops for routine maintenance on Starfleet’s long-range sensors.

This is a new crew. Some of you have worked together, but many of you have not. There will be bumps in the road. I ask that you keep an open mind and an open heart to your new crewmates and communicate where there are issues. As your captain, I am happy to assist in any interpersonal issues that should arise. Thank you all for your attention. Crew, ready for takeoff.”

And just like that, Captain Beverly Marsh’s first pre-flight address was done. She was never much for fanfare. Not that she didn’t have style. There was flair in everything Bev did, just by virtue of her doing it.

Richie felt rather useless on the bridge. Bev was leaning towards her first officer, talking in hushed tones about take-off procedures. Richie had seen him hanging around Bev before. Ben something. He mostly followed her around quietly. Richie had only spoken to him a handful of times, but he seemed like a nice enough guy. He was certainly useful when Richie picked fights at bars he couldn’t finish. Good guy Ben.

Stan was in full nerd mode. Richie always loved watching him work. Stan—his Stan, who adopted any injured animal he picked up off the street and who laughed at all of Richie’s jokes, especially the bad ones—was a different person when he was focussed. Richie swore that Stan saw the stars when he closed his eyes. Stan always shook his head and said that anyone could see the stars if they knew how to look at them. Whatever the fuck _that_ meant.

The crew progressed through the pre-flight procedures. The starship buzzed with excited. The navigators were setting coordinates and the operations team communicated with Starfleet command. Several levels below, the engine hummed to life. And true to the only thing Richie knew about Dr. Kaspbrak, he grew increasingly sallow. Spaceflight has got to be tough for an aviophobe.

He sidled closer to Dr. Kaspbrak, earning a weak glare. Richie had the grace to ignore it. “I hear take-offs are easier from the med bay.”

Dr. Kaspbrak swallowed hard and shook his head. “It’s Bev’s—it’s Captain Marsh’s maiden voyage.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Richie had not known they were close. He had never heard Bev mention him, as far as he knew. But he also did not know anything about Dr. Kaspbrak aside from the fact that he was scared to shit of space. But he was right. It was Bev’s first launch. It was not how she wanted to become captain. Bev would say—although she had not—that it was not her time. Even as she sat in the captain’s chair, she looked uncomfortable. But she also looked like she belonged there.

Deciding it was less weird to be standing useless on the bridge with someone else than alone, Richie stayed next to Dr. Kaspbrak as the U.S.S. Dauntless readied for launch. When they got the signal from Starfleet command, Bev flashed them both a smile before giving the order for lift-off. The engines, soft as a purr, raised the Dauntless slowly off the ground. It was by far the smoothest craft Richie had been stationed on.

This seemed little comfort to Dr. Kaspbrak. His face, which only minutes earlier appeared to be permanently fixed in a scowl, was tense and gaunt. His teeth, bright and straight, bite into his bottom lip so hard they may have pierced the skin. He was pale and clammy, sweat beading on his forehead.

“Jesus, you weren’t kidding about the whole space fear,” Richie said, fixing his eyes on Dr. Kaspbrak’s shaking hands.

Dr. Kaspbrak followed Richie’s stare and balled his hands into fists. They continued to shake. “Yes, because it’s so hilarious to have phobias. So wonderful. What a slice of fucking paradise.”

“How do you even operate on a spaceship?” Richie asked, as the Dauntless lifted out of Starfleet Headquarters airspace.

“It’s mostly leaving the atmosphere. And re-entering the atmosphere, landing, turbulence, and being on the bridge. It’s not so bad from the med bay windows.”

Dr. Kaspbrak’s balled fists continued to shake harder, until he moved to fold his arms and grip his elbows tightly. This only served to make his entire body shake. He kept closing his soft, doe eyes before snapping them open, as if worried he would miss a moment of the takeoff he so clearly wished he was sitting down for.

Richie raised his hand and rested it between Dr. Kaspbrak’s shoulder blades. He applied a gentle pressure. His touch was met first with a recoil, but Dr. Kaspbrak relaxed into his hand, not breaking his stare out the bridge window.

The U.S.S. Dauntless was light and fast. It soared further into the sky as the city below them shrunk, and shrunk, and shrunk until they rose through the clouds. The ship was steady and stable as it rose through the atmosphere. The turbulence was gentler than Richie’s last domestic flight, let alone the Gaia, although the service wasn’t as good. The bridge bubbled with life, with conversation, and with reassuring sounds from their equipment suggesting strong take-off signs.

Finally, the U.S.S. Dauntless burst from Earth’s atmosphere, rumbling gently upon exit. Then, the Dauntless was in space, slicing effortlessly through the void. Richie smiled, despite himself. He never could quite get over the stars.

The bridge window briefly transmitted their rear camera feed. Earth already looked so small behind them as they propelled further into space, a marble of blue, white, and green swirling together. Richie was watching Bev, who smiled softly back at earth before clearing the feed. Ahead was only the cosmos.

“Engage.”

With her command, the world around the Dauntless slowed, light bending around the vessel as they dropped into warp. The initial acceleration was smooth, almost unsettlingly so, and the Dauntless made quick work of reaching its travel speed. Everyone on the bridge let out a breath. That was that. Now to cruise until the first long-range sensor, which was still five days travel away.

Dr. Kaspbrak let out the biggest sigh of relief, and Richie realized his hand was still pressed against his shoulder blades. Colour had returned to Dr. Kaspbrak’s face. His hands were loosely holding his elbows, no longer causing full-body shudders. He had stopped biting his lips and they were left chapped and peeling, but somehow not bleeding.

Dr. Kaspbrak looked up at Richie and he dropped his hand. His lips were curled softly upwards and his eyes were wide. “Hey. Thanks, Richie.”

Richie’s throat tightened. He made a sound loosely in the vicinity of _any time, baby_ , before saluting Bev, winking at Stan, and half-sprinting off the bridge.

He needed a fucking nap.

***

_Stardate 2250.104 | 1715 hours_

“Good morning, sleeping beauty!”

“Shut up, Stan,” Richie said, groaning as he sat down.

The mess hall was overflowing with people, but there was room at the captain’s table if only because it was too early in the mission to be brave. Little did they know that if Bev could have replaced the mess hall with the largest family sized table ever designed, she already would have.

“Hi Richie! Did you sleep well?” Good Guy Ben asked, his voice so sincere that Richie could not have snapped at him if he tried.

“Not really, but seeing your gorgeous face first thing? I could take on the world.”

Ben flushed pleasantly and smiled. “Thanks Richie! I hope you do.”

Oh, a straight. That’s unfortunate. He should have known from how closely Ben followed Bev _everywhere_. That being said, he and Stan also spent all of their academy days following Bev around, so it was not necessarily a good indicator of who wanted to fuck her. Bev mostly looked excited her friends were getting along.

He reached for fries from Stan’s plate, dodging the expected swat at his hand and successfully securing the mission objective. He shovelled them into his mouth before he asked, “How was the first sensor?”

Stan shrugged. “I don’t know, ask Bill.”

“Who the fuck is Bill? I don’t know someone named _Bill.”_

“You were calling him Dr. Octopus yesterday,” Stan pointed out.

“Oh, Doc Ock. Why didn’t you start with that? How am I supposed to remember people with these boring names, like _Bill_ and _Stan_ and _Beverly_.”

“What about Ben?” Stan asked.

Richie placed a hand on his chest and gasped. “Ben? How could I forget _Ben_. You’re so rude Staniel.”

Someone dropped a tray down, hard, next to Richie’s spot. “My ridiculing-Billiam senses are tingling.”

Richie turned to see none other than Audra Phillips. Her hair was different from the last time Richie had seen her, cropped to her chin and layered in a fluffy bob. It suited her.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, I didn’t know they were letting giant fucking gays on this ship,” Richie said, grinning as he pulled her into a hard side hug before she could avoid it. She could have kicked his ass so hard he hit light speed, but instead she leaned into his shoulder and smiled. “How the fuck else would you get here, Tozier?”

“Just good old fashioned nepotism, baby,” he said, winking at Bev. She frowned. “Besides, I thought you had switched to desk duty?” _Like me_.

The last time he had seen Audra was two starships ago, on the U.S.S. Stargazer. She was second-in-command in the Security Department on the Stargazer and was part of a landing team for a negotiation with a notoriously pacifist Klingon sect. Or at least, they had been pacifists. The negotiation was an ambush and everyone in the landing team, except for Audra and the captain, was slaughtered. Audra and Richie had been close before the incident, but it was not long before Audra switched to desk duty and Richie moved onto the Gaia.

Audra shrugged against him and leaned forward to steal some of Stan’s fries. Stan protested as his fries migrated to Audra’s salad plate. Audra acted like she didn’t notice. “Didn’t take. I missed shooting stuff.”

“That’s healthy,” Richie sniped.

“Oh yeah? Come back and talk to me when you’ve healthily processed your trauma, asshat,” Audra said, more amused than angry, before digging her elbow hard enough into Richie’s side that he saw stars. “Anyway, Chief of Security spot? What more could I ask for. I love keeping the cadets in line.”

Bev smiled at her before turning to Richie. “What about you, Rich? How are the early scans of the anomaly?”

Eek. That was the million dollar question. Try as he might, Richie had not forgotten how important his role was on this mission. Cosmic anomalies? They were not in his wheelhouse, they were his entire wheelhouse. Cosmic anomalies were why Richie was perhaps a little more infamous than he intended.

The Dauntless had started to get early data from the anomaly. It was at the very edge of Starfleet sensors, so the data was raw and, for the most part, rather crude. There was enough data that something about the anomaly felt…unusual. Starfleet had been operating under the assumption that this was some form of singularity or radiation belt. The early scans showed no traces of radiation. Of course, it could be a _very_ young singularity, but why would it even show up on the sensors that early? What were the sensors _sensing_ that did not come through in the data? Why was it that even as they got closer, the data didn’t get clearer?

These questions had been keeping Richie and his department busy, but Richie most of all. He always got a bit obsessed with projects. Projects like this were easier than his research. He got huge bursts of energy when working on something new. He loved his research—he did, beyond any measure—but he appreciated the distraction that missions provided. When he returned to his research after a mission, it was as if he had never seen it before.

What it meant was that he was pulling doubles on the first week of the mission on his deeply entrenched 1800 hours-0600 hours schedule, eating breakfast while his friends ate dinner and the reverse. The doubles were not making the data make sense, but they made Richie feel like he was trying.

“Good. Yeah, good. Bit weird,” Richie said. It was the first time he had said it aloud.

Audra, mouth now full of Stan’s fries, asked, “Weird how?”

The problem was, they…weren’t quite weird. There was a million different explanations for why there was no radiation coming in from the early readings. The Dauntless was still probably a month out from the anomaly. Richie was a while away from getting good enough data to understand the anomaly. The only thing the scans told him for sure was that it was bigger than it was when it was first picked up by the Starfleet sensors two weeks prior.

Everyone at the table was staring at him. Oops. “It’s not actually. I don’t know. Just a weird feeling. I don’t think it’s a radiation belt or a singularity. I’m not sure what it is.”

Stan hummed before returning to his fries. “It’s probably the long-range sensors. Not much activity this side of the galaxy. Even on the fastest path we are taking, flying at warp the whole trip, we are still four weeks out.”

Audra nodded. “Bill was telling me that the sensor we repaired today was wonky. I mean, he didn’t say wonky. He said _experiencing significant irregularities such that readings are likely to be unreliable_ but I was not listening too closely.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course,” Richie said, as everyone returned to their food.

It was definitely the sensors. The data was being relayed so many times that even if the sensors were in peak condition—which, if Doc Ock was to be believed, they were not—the distortion would still impact the data’s reliability.

Richie shook his head. He needed some coffee and some breakfast. He was going to take a break from the anomaly data today. There was an interesting new redshift survey out of Ocampa on the Alpha/Delta border that may have captured KN-1-3-9. It was not yet translated from Ocampan and he had needed to retake xenolinquistics at the Academy. He was in for a fun ride.

“Dr. Tozier, to the med bay, Dr. Tozier, to the med bay.”

Richie groaned. “What, now?” he asked, gesticulating at the ceiling of the mess hall. “Can’t I get something to eat first?”

As if mocking him, the comms repeated, “Dr. Tozier, to the med bay, Dr. Tozier, to the med bay.”

Bev laughed as Richie planted his face on the mess hall table. “You should probably go. I was four minutes late for my physical on Monday and I was paged probably twenty times.”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck.”

Richie peeled his face off the table and extracted his legs from the tiny benches not made for someone his height. He gave Audra a peck on the cheek, which she gracefully accepted, before edging around the table to steal more of Stan’s fries. Stan, looking utterly defeated, did not event attempt to swat Richie’s hand away. For his generosity, Richie pecked Stan on the cheek too, successfully making him look _more_ miserable.

“Later, losers,” Richie said, shoving the fries into his mouth as he left the mess hall.

***

_Stardate 2250.104 | 1740 hours_

The med bay was a different beast on every starship Richie had ever been on. All of them were clean, of course, but apart from the baseline level of requisite sanitation, they were largely a product of the Chief Medical Officer’s neuroses.

The Dauntless’ med bay was, by far, the most neurotic he had seen. Sure, the Dauntless was straight off the assembly line, but this was something else. From the moment he walked through the doors, everything in sight was labelled in the same neat, capitalized, blocky writing and, as far as the drawers he could see, categorized first by type of equipment or medication, and then alphabetized.

Richie was still standing near the door staring at the field medical kits (arranged by mission type first, then by severity level) when Dr. Kaspbrak rounded the corner and scowled at him, holding a PADD in his hands.

“Took you long enough.”

“Dude, what the fuck. I’m on Gamma/Omega shifts. I _just_ woke up,” Richie said.

Dr. Kaspbrak’s scowl deepened. “I know. Your physical was originally scheduled for noon, but I saw your logged hours so I moved it. You’re welcome, by the way. Now, hurry up.”

Dr. Kaspbrak sped back around the corner of the med bay before Richie could process what he had said. “A physical?” he yelled after him.

Richie followed him down the hallway, taking only a few long strides to catch up until he was walking next to Dr. Kaspbrak. He was wearing his regulation uniform, with an old-school stethoscope draped around his neck and sporting some absurd combination of a toolbelt and fanny pack holding various medical equipment, some of which Richie could not, and did not want to, identify. He had at least three different tricorders looped into the fanny-belt monstrosity, and several hypos labelled in the same blocky handwriting as the rest of the med bay.

Before Richie could comment on the fanny-belt, they rounded the corner into a private examination room, adjacent to the empty rows of medical bay beds. The room was equipped with numerous screens that already had his medical file displayed in all its glory. There was an examination bed, various forms of equipment, and a —

“I don’t know what you’re planning on doing to me in here but I can assure you I am _not_ running,” Richie said, nodding towards the treadmill with far too many buttons on it.

A laugh bubbled past Dr. Kaspbrak’s lips, as if it surprised him, and filled the small examination room. His mouth opened wide and his laugh was loud, punctuated by renewed laughter each time he inhaled. His upper row of teeth were bared, perfectly straight and like something out of a toothpaste commercial. His nose was scrunched and the corner of his eyes crinkled.

It wasn’t just his face—he laughed with his whole body, reaching up a hand to cover his mouth and tossing his head back. Dr. Kaspbrak shook his head, trying to stop laughing. Richie just stared at him, awestruck. It wasn’t even a funny joke.

“No, no, I’m not going to make you run. I bet that’s a sight to see, though,” Dr. Kaspbrak said, wiping moisture from the corner of his eye.

“Just pull up some videos later of a giraffe running, I promise it’ll hit the spot,” Richie said. Dr. Kaspbrak laughed again, but pointed at the examination table.

Richie took a seat and stared around the room. He was surrounded by his entire medical history. The nearest screen to him was his family medical history. Heart disease on his dad’s side and cancer on his mom’s. He was grateful they were both still healthy, even as they progressed into their sixties. He attributed it to his mom’s commitment to healthy eating and exercise. He attributed his dad’s health to luck, because his dad was the one who always brought him junk food growing up. His throat tightened at the thought and he looked away. It was too early to be homesick.

Dr. Kaspbrak whipped a tricorder out of his fanny-belt and started scanning Richie. His eyes, a moment earlier crinkled with laughter, were fixed on the tricorder as it rattled out results. The results appeared, moments later, on the only empty screen in the room.

“Your vitals are fine. Are you on any new medications?” Dr. Kaspbrak asked, as the tricorder whirred softly.

“Nope.”

“Is your allergy chart accurate?”

“Yep.”

“Are you sexually active?”

Richie grinned and tilted his head. “Depends who’s asking. I can be.”

Dr. Kaspbrak nearly dropped his tricorder, but instead caught it mid-fall right on the power button, shutting the scanner down. “Dammit, Richie! _I’m_ asking as your _physician_. And need I remind you that pursuant to Starfleet Regulation 223.2, sexual relations are prohibited except between officers of the same rank.”

“No worries, that’s what I am hoping for,” Richie said, winking. He was all too familiar with Starfleet Regulation 223.2.

Exasperated, Dr. Kaspbrak tucked away his tricorder and pulled his stethoscope up to his ears. He placed his PADD on the examination table next to Richie. Without warning, Dr. Kaspbrak tugged at the hem of Richie’s shirt, slipping the hand bearing the chestpiece inside and pressing the plate firmly against Richie’s chest. “Breathe normally.”

The stethoscope was cold but Dr. Kaspbrak’s hands were warm. He was leaning in close to Richie, scowl still affixed on his face, but listening intently. Richie tried to breathe normally but he was not sure if he remembered how to. Slow. Steady. He stared at the screen with his vitals on it as if trying to manifest their return. His heart rate was definitely too fast.

“I noticed you were quite badly injured on your last mission. On the…the Gaia, my notes say. Are you experiencing any lingering—“

Richie recoiled. If Dr. Kaspbrak noticed, he didn’t say anything. “Nope, no, nada, just peachy. Just peachy. Hey, it’s my turn to ask a question.”

Dr. Kaspbrak’s raised his eyebrows, making little lines appear in his forehead. He withdrew the stethoscope and placed it back around his neck. “No, it’s not. This is a physical.”

Richie sighed dramatically. “Fine. Would you at least tell me your name? I feel like we’re there now that you’ve felt me up and told me to fuck one of my colleagues.”

“I _did not_ say that. And we are not there yet,” Dr. Kaspbrak said.

“Pretty please? You called me Richie just now, it’s only fair,” Richie said, contorting his features into something that he hoped looked charming instead of ridiculous.

“My apologies, Dr. Tozier, that was improper,” Dr. Kaspbrak said instead. He picked up the PADD to jot down a few notes.

“I mean, you can keep calling me Dr. Tozier if you like. It’s very sexy. Reminds me of my massive brain.”

“Eddie. It’s Eddie. Shut the fuck up.”

Richie smiled, pleased with himself, and motioned a zipper across his lips. Eddie.

The rest of the physical proceeded uneventfully, with Richie largely (and miraculously) keeping his mouth shut. Dr. Kaspbrak—Eddie was efficient and focussed on his work when not being distracted. He proceeded through the normal physical checklist, including by taking blood samples and updating booster shots. When Richie asked for a juice box, Eddie gave him an unflavoured nutrient bar.

Eddie asked more lifestyle questions as they proceeded, frowning disapprovingly at Richie’s alcohol and weed use (off-mission, although this did not appear to reassure him), his diet, and his exercise habits. The only thing that seemed to make him happy was when Richie told him he drank lots of water. That earned him a smile and a soft _oh, well,good job_ that made Richie flush more than he could justify.

He wished Eddie had not asked about the Gaia. Richie thought he had cut him off in time, but the thought of it still wriggled into his brain. His injuries had long healed. Even the last of his pain disappeared after a combination of unhealthy pain management techniques and the passage of time. All that was left was the scars that he tried not to look at when getting dressed in the morning. Oh, and the trauma. Can’t forget about that.

“We’re all done,” Eddie said, snapping Richie out of his train of thought. “Your blood tests are done, everything is clear.”

Eddie turned away from him as he made some notes in Richie’s chart, writing in those dumb blocky letters. Richie tried to read his notes, catching the words _annoying_ and _uncomfortable discussing—_ oh, he had not wanted to read that note. Eddie, oblivious, started to collect the equipment used for sanitation. Richie cleared his throat.

“So, do you wanna grab some breakfast? Or dinner? You can make sure I eat some greens,” Richie asked as he hopped off the examination table.

“Not with you,” Eddie said, without turning around. Ouch.

Well, that was fine. Just fine. Richie would go eat breakfast alone at nearly 1900 hours like a grown man. He wasn’t pouting more than was appropriate.

Eddie sighed, still not looking at Richie. “Just, give me a minute to tidy up.”

Richie clapped and whooped, smacking Eddie on his back. “You won’t regret it, Eddie spaghetti.”

“I already regret it. I already regret it so, so much.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> stan: 👀  
> richie: 🙈  
> eddie: 😕

_Stardate 2250.111 | 0710 hours_

It was a good thing no one had worked up the courage to sit at the captain’s table. With the addition of Bill and Mike, dragged by Audra, and Eddie, dragged by Richie, their table was easily the fullest and most raucous in the mess hall. The tables were meant to seat six short ( _Average!_ Eddie insisted) people, and between Ben, Mike, and Richie, they were taking up far more space than they should have.

The result was a sardine can of a bench, but one calculated with sufficient precision to contain them all. The tallest people were relegated to the edges of the table, which meant that Richie was sitting with one leg dangling into the walkway between their table and the next. Take that operational health and safety.

Eddie was squeezed between him and Audra, not having dared to claim an end seat. He must have decided not to test the matter while assigning everyone to their seats like a sexy, bossy kindergarten teacher. _A regular bossy kindergarten teacher_ , Richie amended.

Not like Eddie would have beed allowed anywhere near kindergarteners, not with a mouth like that. Eddie was arguing (discussing?) with Bill about an incident in engineering the day before that put him and Mike in the med bay. He was rattling off engineering department accident statistics and the chances and consequences of a hull breach. Bill mostly looked amused, and certainly did not seem apologetic.

It was the end of Richie’s day and the beginning of everyone else’s, so Richie was eating pancakes. This made the vein in the side of Eddie’s head bulge when he first sat down, but instead of saying anything, Eddie left the table and returned with an extra one of his horrendous green smoothies. He set it down next to Richie’s pancake plate and returned to the conversation without missing a beat, and that was all Richie had been thinking about since. Well, that and his left thigh, which was pressed snug against Eddie’s.

”—right, Richie?“ Eddie said, slapping his arm. Shit.

“Hmm? Sorry, I was thinking about how this smoothie actually tastes 10% less disgusting than it looks!”

Eddie threw his hands in the air as the table laughed at him, or Richie, or both. “Unbelievable. Anyway, sorry, Bev, to answer your question. I am done executive crew physicals and I am mostly focussing on clerical work until the next time Bill floods engineering. How’s captaining going?”

“Uneventfully, which trust me, is what we want,” Bev said. “I keep sending back reports to command and it feels like they’re just waiting for me to fuck something up.”

“They’re idiots. You’re doing a great job,” Ben said, looking angrier than Richie had ever seen him. Bev laid a hand on his arm and smiled at him.

“Ugh, get a room,” Richie said, making them both flush. “Speaking of, how’s sharing a bathroom?”

Audra burst out laughing, while everyone else stared, perplexed, between Richie and Bev. Ben and Bev both blushed darker, immediately averting their eyes from each other. Richie just smiled, trying to project innocence. He wasn’t trying to _meddle_ , but he had eyes and the two of them only had eyes for each other. Richie was just trying to…nudge.

Audra, still laughing, explained, “Some genius decades ago thought making the Captain and First Officer share a bathroom would be good for executive cohesion or some bullshit. But why do _you_ know that, Richie?”

“Well, let’s just say I slept with more than my fair share of captains before Bev and I ruined that for future generations of officers,” Richie said, winking at Bev.

Audra, Bill, and Mike laughed, but they were the only ones and they stopped short. Stan was mouthing _beepbeeprichie_ at him. Ben was glaring. Eddie was glaring. Bev just looked…surprised. Maybe disappointed. Eddie, under the table, pressed his elbow hard into Richie’s thigh like the glares hadn’t given him a fucking hint. How did Eddie know about this anyway? What the—

And then Bev started laughing. The tension at the table broke and, while no one else joined in with Bev, everyone at least stopped glaring at Richie. They instead stared, smiling encouragingly, at Bev. She didn’t need fucking kid’s gloves. Richie knew that. That’s why he made the joke in the first place. He was still relieved.

Bev stopped laughing long enough to give Richie a knowing smile. She really wasn’t mad. God, to be well-adjusted. “I guess you’ll just have to go down in history as the man who fucked the most captains.”

“Someone call Guinness, make sure they got it down,” Stan said dryly, making the table erupt into a round of laughter.

“Finally, you’ll be known for something other than your conspiracy theories,” Audra teased.

“Look here you fuckers, I’m not a _conspiracy theorist_ ,” Richie defended. “I am simply an early proponent of a phenomena not yet widely accepted by the scientific community.”

“So, a conspiracy theorist?” Eddie sniped. The table exploded with laughter again, attracting nervous glances from the neighbouring tables.

“Okay, laugh it up, don’t come crying to me when you run into your clone from the Mirrorverse!”

That was the final straw, as everyone at the table except Richie doubled-over in laughter, pushing him further off the cramped bench. Richie shovelled pancakes into his mouth and tried to glare at them. He was pretty sure it came off more fond than annoyed. He was used to this. He had been friends with Stan since high school. There was no way he could emerge from that without a thick skin.

Eddie was laughing too, his whole body swaying as his eyes crinkled shut. It was a deep, escalating laugh, louder than anyone’s. He was flushing from the heat of the mess hall and probably the laughter. Eddie leaned forward again, dropping his hand onto Richie’s thigh. He squeezed, bracing himself, as he continued to laugh. Richie cleared his throat and tried to figure out why Eddie’s hand felt like fire.

The laughter eventually died down and their conversation returned to a normal pace. Bill tried to explain to the table how he and Mike flooded engineering. Mike tried to explain that he had _nothing_ to do with it, and if he had, neither of them would have concussed themselves. Eddie started arguing with them again, only then removing his hand from Richie’s thigh.

Richie grabbed the green smoothie, and downed several disgusting, kale-y swallows. When he put the glass back down, Stan was staring at him. Smirking. Richie flipped him off.

Eddie, still arguing far too loudly for 0600 hours, insisted that the flood had to be one of the worst in Starfleet history, and Ben asked—in his earnest and eager voice, mind you—whether Eddie was interested in the history of floods on Federation vessels. Eddie stopped talking for once, mouth agape. Richie bit back a laugh. He absolutely did _not_ want to hear about the history of floods on Federation vessels. Instead, Eddie, clenching his jaw, told Ben he was very interested.

With nothing but the deepest respect to Ben, Richie’s mind drifted back to his own work. Twelve days into their mission and he was more confused than when he started. Stan told him it was still too early to say if anything was weird. He was right. It _was_ too early, and nothing _was_ weird. The last sensor the Dauntless stopped for maintenance at was operating at 30% capacity.

It was a neglected patch of space. Poor planetary habitability for carbon-based species. There were planets here and there capable of supporting life. KN-1-3-9 was an example. Even the planets that were higher on the habitability scale were not exactly California. The Federation had pretty much marked KN-1-3-9 as habitable once it ticked off the minimum criteria. Everything the Federation knew about the planet was from scans when this part of the galaxy was charted. It was in a suitable, stable star system, with low stellar variation. The planet’s gravity was 120% of Earth’s, well within habitable ranges. It likely had two seasons based on its orbit, both within tolerable human temperature ranges, and it was a Class I water habitat with signs of flora and fauna.

Planet habitability was as much a qualitative assessment as it was a quantitative assessment. They had the whole galaxy to choose from—they could afford to be a little picky. What the scans couldn’t tell the Federation is whether the soil was fertile for digestible crops, the hostility of the fauna, whether the seasons were unbearable, and all the other little nitpicks sentient species pack around. The crew of the Dauntlesswould be the first souls on the planet. Well, not Richie. There were not a lot of away teams for the guy they brought along to stare at the hole in the void.

Richie swallowed. Not that he thought there was a hole in space. He was just tired at looking at the data that told him less every day, not more. They were not picking up radiation at anticipated levels. The radiation they were picking up was little more than background. They could not detect any gravity signatures or magnetism, any solid masses, any temperature fluctuations. But the sensors were picking up something. Some sort of energy.

He was worrying about it too much. No one on his team was working doubles. They were content to look at the data, work with it as much as they could, and wait patiently for better data. Richie was the only person agonizing over it. He couldn’t describe it. He had tried his hand at translating the Ocampan article with a translator and his own limited knowledge of the technical terms, got about ten pages in, and concluded it was hopeless without someone who knew the language better.

“Rich, you okay?” Stan asked, interrupting the conversation at the table and drawing far more attention to Richie than he would have preferred.

“Is there anyone on the ship who knows Ocampan?” he asked, pointedly ignoring the question. The rest of the table stared at him, bewildered.

Audra grinned, “Maybe! There’s this absolute smokeshow, works on the bridge. Most gorgeous woman I have ever laid eyes on. Andorian, long, long white hair, iridescent eyes, great tits.”

“Lieutenant Commander Olivia Bartlett? Usually Delta/Alpha?” Bev supplied, looking at Ben for confirmation. He seemed uncomfortable responding to the particular description supplied by Audra.

“Sounds possible,” Audra said, nodding. “I met her at drinks two days ago, didn’t get a name. We had several libations and I asked her if she was good with her tongue, you know, because I’m a classy lady. And I guess she didn’t pick up on it because she started excitedly telling me about all the languages she speaks. I think I’m in love with her. And Ocampan may have been one of them?”

It was a better lead than any he had so far. Ocampan was not widely spoken in the Federation, and he had not even _thought_ to check in with the bridge crew. They always had a xenolinguist somewhere. He had spent too much time in his own fucking head. Stan continued to stare at him, head titled and lips downturned.

“Thanks, Phillips,” Richie said, standing abruptly, his thigh warm where it had been pressed against Eddie’s. He gave the table a salute. “Doc Tozier’s on the case. Catch ya later.”

Richie smoothly picked up his tray and dropped it at the sorting station on his way out of the mess hall. He could feel Stan’s eyes drilling into the back of his head. They had known each other too long and Stan was just being protective, concerned. He knew how Richie could get when he was focussed on a problem, especially when it was not going his way.

Richie was halfway to the bridge before he realized he was still holding the green smoothie Eddie had got him. He had never been so grateful for the convenience of starship trash chutes.

***

_Stardate 2250.111 | 2240 hours_

_”—_ And then, Patty complained about the path the Dauntless is on.”

“Like, to Stan?”

“Yeah, fully knowing he plotted the course. He tried to explain it was the fastest safe route.”

“So this was when Patty said—“

“ _Is there a faster route that’s more dangerous, Lieutenant Commander Uris? Because I promise I can fly it_ ,” Bev said, trying to channel Patty gentle but confident tenor.

“I don’t think I have ever seen Stan blush,” Ben added. Bev nodded vigorously, pointing right at Ben.

“You are absolutely right,” she said, laughing. “Years! I’ve known Stan for years! And I can’t explain what I saw today. _Lieutenant Commander Uris_.”

Contrary to Richie’s more suggestive imaginings, Bev and Ben mostly used their shared bathroom to debrief on the days events. Or rather, on the day’s gossip. The two of them spent nearly every waking minute together as it was, working in concert on the bridge, so the last thing they wanted to talk about in their shared bathroom was the outstanding reports to file.

It had been awkward the first few days, remembering to lock both doors, or forgetting and seeing Ben in far less clothing than was good for Bev’s composure. They had decided to embrace the shared bathroom instead. Each day then met, near nine, after they had changed out of their regulation uniforms and finished their daily logs.

Bev would sit on the counter, legs crossed with one knee mostly into the sink, dressed in a sweater large enough to swallow her whole and tight leggings she only wore to sleep. Ben would lean against the wall across from her, towel rack digging into his back, in what Bev could only describe as a blessed lack of formal clothing. His grey sweatpants were tied loosely around his waist, just enough to keep his white sleeveless shirt tucked in and smooth against his torso. Not that Bev was looking, of course. She was actively trying to look away.

“Can Patty fly it? The asteroid field?” Ben asked.

“Eddie and her were in the Academy together, technically “mature students”, which Eddie hated. He said that she was the best pilot in the galaxy, which coming from him, must count for something,” Bev said. She paused. “You know, I think we saw Stan fall in love today. Did you see how fast he reprogrammed the flight route?”

Ben laughed, his eyes crinkling and his wide jaw framing his smile. “Everything you’ve told me about Stan made that quite surprising. Has he not—has he not been in love before?”

Bev titled her head back and forth, trying to settle on an answer. “Hmm. I don’t think so. I thought he and Richie were in love when I first met them, actually. They turned out to be 80% platonic and just chronically codependent.”

Ben laughed, face twisted with confusion but seeming to accept the answer. Bev laughed too, shifting on the counter to try to get her knee out of the sink. She caught a glimpse of herself in the large mirror as she tried to settle back against it.

The woman in the mirror looked tired. Her hair had grown too long for her tastes, brushing against her shoulders. It looked flat and dull from being tied up all day, the kinks from her hair tie giving her the appearance of curl she most certainly could not achieve naturally. She met her own eyes. Bev swallowed and looked down at the sink.

It had been a long few months. Being back to active duty helped, but it still felt as if the last six months of her life were both the longest and the quickest she had ever lived through. It did not help that there was no break between _thanks for exposing the toxic workplace culture on many of our starships_ and _hey, it would be good press if you became a captain after all of this, what with your contributions to Starfleet_. Who was she to refuse a new ship? An opportunity to build her team from scratch? It was not something she could say no to but she certainly did not feel ready to say yes.

The mission had gone smoothly so far. Each of their maintenance stops occurred without any incident reports—a miracle in itself—and Starfleet command had not so much as blinked at the incident report that came out of Engineering. Bill’s reputation preceded him. Still, he and Mike were doing good work on the repairs. Their ensigns did most of the grunt work, but at least one of them was out on every spacewalk with their team to coordinate efforts.

In some respects, the mission was better than smooth. Little by way of conflict bubbled on the ship, unlike the Gaia. Bev had been able to get ahead on all the little things she learned could get away from a captain, like budget approvals, equipment requisitions, inventory approval, and actually reviewing reports from all of her department instead of foisting them onto Ben.

The Dauntless was en route to the asteroid field, shaving three days off their trip, and Stan and Patty were inseparable on the bridge. Stan looked at her like he looked at renderings of the galaxy. Patty was thrilled to have someone to talk about the technicalities of spaceflight with. If Richie had been on the bridge at all over the last week, he may have even been jealous.

Richie was not around to see it, though. They only saw him at meals, more often at dinner than breakfast, and he never seemed entirely there. He did not talk about his research much, but Bev saw his reports. There wasn’t much to talk about. The data was limited and inconclusive. As far as Bev could tell, there was nothing to worry about.

“Bev?”

She had not noticed Ben cross the bathroom until he was leaning against the sink next to her, arm brushing lightly against her knee. He looked tired too, but only the fatigue of a long day, not a long year. His eyes were bright and curious, his voice soft, and Bev was not sure if he could stay this close to her without her leaning in to kiss him. She _couldn’t_ kiss him.

“Sorry, I was just—thinking,” Bev said.

“Rather late in the day to be doing that, Captain,” Ben said, voice gentle. He raised a hand slowly, giving Bev time to react, and laid it on her knee. “Anything you want to talk about?”

It was not like Bev was oblivious. She knew how Ben felt about her, how he had always felt about her. He was gentle and kind. Ben met her where she was and although he did not push her to keep moving, he took her hand and guided her as she took her next steps. She had hoped, especially since the Gaia, that he would move on. Instead, he stood quietly by her side as she accepted the captaincy, as she made him her first officer, her _number one_. He met her in their shared bathroom every night and they talked, sometimes for hours. They brushed their teeth side-by-side, playfully bumping each other for counter space.

The problem was, Bev also knew how she felt about Ben, all sincerity and honesty, never hiding anything from her. Their bathroom chats were the best parts of her day. She laughed at Ben when he insisted he had new grey hairs coming in, and he stayed in the bathroom with her as she removed her makeup every night, always amazed at the swirls of beiges and pinks that stained the towels after she was done. She had hoped, since the Gaia, that _she_ would move on. She had not.

“Does Richie seem okay to you?” Bev asked instead, _like a coward_. It was not a lie, though. She was worried about Richie. He got weird on missions, but never like this. Not even on the Gaia.

Ben took his time responding. He was so careful with his words, always measured when he spoke. He was not afraid to take his time to get things right. He was the perfect number one. Honest but never cruel, strict when he had to be, and an excellent listener.

“Honestly, I don’t know him well enough to say,” Ben said. Bev nodded. That was fair. “But he seems to be getting along with Eddie, which I think is a good sign. I wasn’t sure where to place my bets on that one.”

Bev laughed. “You call that getting along? They had a shouting match at dinner last night after Richie made another joke about fucking Eddie’s _dead_ mother.”

Ben shrugged. “Yeah, but what about after? Eddie brought him back a salad and Richie ate it. Friendships are complicated. I think they’re sweet.”

Bev hummed. Friendships were complicated. Understatement of the year. “You’re right. I’ll check in on him tomorrow myself.”

The bathroom fell silent again, and Ben’s hand was still on her knee. His hand was so large, covering her entire knee, his radiator-warm skin burning even through her leggings. He saw her staring but did not move away. He just stared softly at her, lips slightly upturned, like he was reading her. Ben was not oblivious either, Bev was certain. He knew how Bev felt. But he also knew what happened on the Gaia, how people in power hurt others because they could, and how scared Bev was of doing the same. He could have moved on, but he waited.

“It’s getting late,” Ben said, patting her leg, before dropping his hand back to his side.

“Yeah, you’re right. Thanks.”

Ben flashed her another one of his mile-wide smiles, “Anytime, Captain.”

With that, Bev slid off the counter, flexing her sore legs. She stretched when she was standing again and her bones popped, echoing in the quiet hum of the bathroom. Ben chuckled when she groaned, eyes crinkling again. Bev wanted to—

“Sleep well, number one,” she said, and walked back into her cold, empty room.

***

_Stardate 2250.118 | 0820 hours_

Richie threw his glasses down on his desk hard enough for them to nearly ricochet off the edge. He rested his elbows on the desk, palms pressing his eyes further into their sockets. If he had to read another fucking word of this report they might fall out.

Olivia from the bridge did, in fact, know Ocampan. Richie had been prepared to beg, bribe, and steal if he had to if it would have convinced her to help him. Instead, when he ran onto the bridge a week ago—and god, if Richie did not miss last week—she spotted him and flagged him down first. She lept to her feet when he stumbled frantically through the bridge doors, and she put both hands in the air to wave him over, as if she did not stand out on the bridge of mostly humans and Vulcans, by virtue of her periwinkle skin and long, shimmering white hair.

Turns out, Olivia—Livvy, as she insisted—had seen him hanging around with Audra. Livvy told him that she had met her a few days ago and thought they had hit it off, but they had not crossed paths again. Livvy was hoping to get a hint as to whether Audra was interested.

So on top of being the only person on the ship _concerned_ about the anomaly, he was also responsible for matchmaking. He had started calling himself the Chief Romance Officer. Eddie did not approve. But who else was supposed to make sure the hottest couples on the bridge got together?

Not that Richie had done much matchmaking since meeting Livvy. No time for romance in the face of a multi-volume Ocampan report that needed translating. He only had to hope that the shared bathroom was doing the heavy lifting for Benverly.

Livvy worked Delta or Alpha shifts over the week. Livvy would work on translating on her Alpha shifts and they would work together on her Delta shifts, Richie filling in the technical words and ironing out the sentences where the language got too complicated. But Livvy was an adept translator and an even faster learner. She asked what words meant where they were technical—redshift being one of the first—and wanted Richie to explain them to her to a level where she would understand their use. It was both exciting to have someone ask about his work and challenging to think about how to teach a concept that took him years to understand.

Livvy learned quickly and the translation moved faster. The report was long, dry, highly technical, and objectively boring, but every section they translated made Richie more and more excited. A survey of this scale was something only Ocampans could render in their short lifetimes. By four days in, Richie was able to confirm that the survey covered KN-1-3-9. It was just a matter of pushing the translation along and reading the final result.

They had finished the translation just before the end of Delta shift, after nearly six hours of endless translating over replicator coffee and potato chips. They high-fived at the end. Livvy even took a copy of the report, insisting she wanted to learn what all the fuss was about, before returning to her room to enjoy her days off. He had not asked her to work until the translation was done, and she did not offer. She just showed up in his office everyday to either join him in translation or pick up where they left off. He was not sure how to possibly repay her, and he told her such. She just asked for a good word in with Audra. Richie was going to put in a good word with _everyone_ for her.

Richie had the final product, the full report. He thought they may even be able to get it certified as a translated copy upon return. At 0600 hours, he moved from his office to his room, trying to give his underlings the impression that he was done working. Instead, he took all his work back to his room and pored over the materials.

He had finished yet another cup of coffee from his overburden replicator and the report was making him increasingly frustrated. He had skipped ahead to the space sector that captured KN-1-3-9. The imaging was incredible, captured with cutting-edge Federation tech. It was mostly sifting through the data to interpret the images. The data was dense, truly an information overload of the sort only Ocampans could assemble and process. Richie was certainly not Ocampan and the report was making less and less sense as he read.

The report combined with the added stress of the readings from the planet were starting to get to Richie. When he wasn’t translating with Livvy, he had been reviewing the data sets coming in as they approached the anomaly. The data was coming through clearer, even if little information was still discernable. The sensors were finally picking up some low-level radiation, but now all the data was coming through in duplicate sets.

Richie was shocked out of his thoughts when the door opened. He whipped his head up, vision blotchy from the pressure on his eyes, as Eddie walked through the doors. To his room. He specifically remembered locking the door out of paranoia from when Bev and Stan came to check in on him the other day. Neither of them had seen that much of him since the academy.

“Dude, anyone ever teach you to knock?” Richie asked, shoving his glasses back onto his face. Eddie ignored him and toed off his shoes at the doors.

Eddie was, as every time Richie saw him, in regulation blues so spotless and smooth that they could have passed for freshly dry-cleaned. The long-sleeved mesh shirt stretched evenly across his torso, taut at Eddie’s arms and stomach.

Richie shook his head to stop staring. “How did you get in?“

“Medical override. I can open any room in an emergency,” Eddie said, leaning down as he struggled with one of his shoe laces. Richie spun his head back down to the report and fixed his gaze on it, willing himself not to stare. There was no way Eddie hadn’t gotten the uniform tailored. _No one_ looked that good in—

“The only emergency here is some creep breaking into my room.”

Eddie kicked off his shoe and straightened up. Richie stopped staring from his peripherals. “Thought I heard the sounds of agony.”

“Well, you’re not ethical but you sure aren’t wrong,” Richie said, eyes narrowing in on the paper bag in Eddie’s hand.

“Shut the fuck up. Do you want dinner or not?” Eddie said, dropping the bag down on his desk.

Before Richie could process that, Eddie neatly cleared a spot on Richie’s desk and unpacked the paper bag. Eddie first pulled out two drinks, placing a neon green smoothie on his side of the desk and placing something in a coffee cup that Richie desperately hoped was coffee (but smelled more like wet socks?) in front of Richie. Eddie pulled two containers from the bottom of the bag, placing them both in front of Richie. One had a large, balanced salad. The other had two slices of pepperoni pizza.

“Oh my god. I _love_ you,” Richie said, peeling the lid from the pizza container. Eddie’s nose scrunched up and his eyebrows furrowed. He stared at Richie like there was something stuck in his teeth already.

“I haven’t seen you all week,” Eddie said flatly. It halfway to a question that Richie did not want to answer

“Aww, did you miss me pumpkin?” Richie asked, mouth full of pizza. Eddie grimaced.

“No. I saw from your logs you’ve been working medically inadvisable hours, and that you haven’t eaten since some indescribably disgusting-sounding concoction—“

“PB & Chilli fries?”

“That’s disgusting. That’s horrendous. You can’t eat like that,” Eddie said.

“You cannot call PB & Chilli fries disgusting, I’ve seen you drink wheatgrass.”

“I absolutely refuse to argue with you about healthy eating.”

Richie made a point of putting down his unfinished pizza slice and removing the cover from the salad. Richie could eat healthy. Richie could also eat PB & Chilli fries. He contained fucking multitudes. The salad looked almost edible, as far as salads went. He drizzled on enough dressing from the cup to make Eddie roll his eyes and took a large bite of the salad. Eddie watched him chew for a moment, as if Richie would spit it out when he wasn’t looking. He blinked several times before scanning the room, eyes ultimately settling on his smoothie. He took a long drink from it.

“I didn’t know stalking could be so sexy,” Richie said, shovelling more salad in his mouth as he did. It was not terrible.

“You’re under my _care_ ,” Eddie said, eyes darting back to glare at Richie. His cheeks were light pink and his brow furrowed.

“Oh yes, tell me more, Dr. Kaspbrak,” Richie said, simpering. Eddie kicked him hard under the table.

“Beep beep, Richie,” Eddie said, voice stern.

Richie groaned. “Not you too. Thanks a lot Bev.”

“Stan told me about it,” Eddie said.

“Oh, good. The one I love the most will be the one to betray me,” Richie said, voice sultry, channeling his best Mae West.

The magic of the impression was lost on Eddie, who simply rolled his eyes again. He eased down into the chair on the other side of Richie’s desk, sitting on the edge as if ready to sprint from the room at a moment’s notice. Richie rolled his eyes and kept eating his salad.

“I wondered,” Eddie started, then paused. His hands fidgeted in his lap. They were visibly dry and rough, the recycled air did that, and Eddie picked at his cuticles. Bad habit, Richie wanted to tease. But he was staring at Eddie’s throat working, swallowing, tightening. “Don’t laugh. I don’t know anything about astrophysics but I wonder if you wanted to talk about what is bothering you.”

It was as if an icy hand closed around around his throat, freezing his breath in place. Eddie was not looking at him, still picking at the skin around his cuticles. Richie tried to look away, he did, but Eddie raised his head before he could. Their eyes met.

Eddie’s eyes were soft, earnest, but they met his gaze without blinking. Richie wanted to tell him about the redshift survey, about how he and Livvy translated every word but not one section gave him any more insight into the part of space they were flying into. Richie wanted to talk about the duplicate readings with someone, even if they just told him the long-ranger sensors were wonky. He wanted to tell Eddie how much it bothered him that he was only here for one thing and Richie couldn’t even get that fucking right.

“Oh my god, do you want to braid each other’s hair too?” Richie chose instead, in an unflattering falsetto.

Eddie’s expression soured. “I’m not staying here if you’re going to be an asshole for no reason.”

Eddie launched himself out of his chair, which tottered dangerously backwards in his wake. It rattled back and forth before coming to a halt, still upright. Eddie walked briskly towards the door with angry, thunderous steps. He dug his toes into his shoes, rucking them most of the way up his feet and stepping on the heels. The shoes looked stiff, unyielding under his step. Eddie did not even try to tie them.

He looked at Richie before he left the room. He was still fuming, a harsh flush up his neck, his ears red, his brows furrowed, jaw set rigidly. But worse than angry, Eddie seemed…sad. Disappointed. “Get some fucking sleep. And come back to breakfast, Rich. Your friends miss you.”

With that, Eddie stormed out of his room, shoes dangling uncomfortably under the soles of his red argyle socks. The doors sealed shut, leaving Richie in total, crushing silence. Richie stared at the smoothie, so bright it was almost chartreuse, that Eddie had left behind.

Richie threw his PADD across the room, watching it bounce on his bed before hitting the back wall and sliding down to the floor. He pushed the notes he made on paper off of his desk, pens rolling across the floor. He ate the adequate salad, drank the fibrous smoothie, and went to sleep miserable.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> patty: 🚀🚀🚀  
> stan: 😍  
> eddie: 🤢

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone reading so far!! Sorry for the slightly shorter chapter, exams got the best of me. Next week we will be going full-steam ahead. Thanks!
> 
> cw: mild description of a phobia-induced panic attack

_Stardate 2250.125 | 0900 hours_

Richie would never have dared to say he took Eddie’s advice, but he had felt far better since he eased up on his workload over the week. He still reviewed the redshift survey daily, trying to avoid focussing on what he was looking for and instead reading it holistically. Livvy, who Richie feared was far smarter than he could ever be, showed up in his office randomly with questions about the report. If Richie hadn’t known better, she had taken it up as a hobby read.

He finally set up Livvy and Audra. Livvy was calm and collected and made gentle, passive compliments about Audra constantly, like she did not notice Audra was a puddle of emotions every time. Maybe she really hadn’t noticed. During their off-shifts, Livvy would spend the time with one hand always resting on Audra’s hand, or shoulder, or back, or neck. Audra started visiting Richie in his office hours to provide unnecessarily graphic details of their newfound sex life and ask whether it was too early to propose, as if Richie could be any help in that department.

Richie had even tried to fix his sleep cycle. While a gradual approach may have been best, Richie had always preferred the approach that took the least amount of time and caused the most distress. By day five, he was on a tenuous, but holding, Alpha/Beta shift schedule like the rest of his friends.

He also came back to meals. He started with dinner that night after Eddie told him off. Bev and Stan both lit up when he sat down, and then exchanged a look that Richie always hated. Like they knew something he didn’t, like they had talked about him just before he sat down and they had found their answer. He was still happy to see them.

In Richie’s absence, they had commandeered a second table, so he returned to a much more comfortable table, if a louder one. Livvy had started sitting with them, but the earlier addition Richie missed was _Patty_.

Richie had known Stan a long time. Stan had dated a couple of people, but it never worked out. Stan always broke it off. Richie gave him shit for it but Stan was unmoved. He said he thought he would be able to tell when it was right, and that he had not found it yet. He also told Richie that someone with commitment issues ought to mind their business, but Richie contested that part.

Patty was kind and clever. When she talked about piloting, she sounded like she loved the stars as much as Stan did. She listened to Stan and engaged with his ideas, but it was not just Stan. It did not matter what you were talking about, she gave her entire attention to you. She asked questions and seemed genuinely interested in what others had to say. The whole time she talked, Stan looked at her like he could see her through all the stars.

Eddie said they had been like this since the first week of the mission. He was long-time friends with Patty, they were both late to the Academy, and had never seen her so happy as when she talked to Stan. The two of them agreed it was as adorable as it was nauseating.

Richie’s newest romantic obsession led him to the bridge that morning, to observe the Stan and Patty interactions in their natural habitat. Stan knew exactly what he was doing and hadn’t stopped glaring at him since he stepped onto the bridge. Bev also knew what Richie was doing, but instead kept biting back laughter and shooting Richie thumbs’ ups when Stan’s back was turned.

They were approaching the asteroid field Stan and Patty had decided to fly through, to shave time off their uneventful flight out. Stan had the star-maps pulled up, and him and Patty were once more charting their flight path. Patty was pointing out the part to Stan that she insisted would be the _most fun to fly through_ because they would, based on current readings of the asteroid field, be required to fly the starship vertically at a certain stage. While Richie never would have suggested Stan would choose a _more_ dangerous path, Patty was confident and calm.

“What kinda disaster are you flying us into, Blum?” Richie shouted across the bridge.

Quick on her feet, Patty turned around and smiled at him. “It would only be a disaster if you were flying it, Tozier.”

She had taken to playfully insulting Richie, which Richie loved almost as much as Stan. Every time Patty was rude to Richie, Stan’s face curled upwards into a smile, eyes fixed on her face.

“You know, I hate to do it to his ego,” Bev said, laughing, “and Richie’s no Patty Blum, but he’s not a bad pilot.“

Richie groaned. “No, do _not_ bring up the Kobayashi Maru. I will not entertain it.”

“Starfleet Command, this is Captain Tozier speaking,” Bev said, starting to mock his voice.

“I know you make us run this test to rescue the civilian vessel, to understand that while we cannot always win, we can do what we can, and we must accept defeat. All important lessons for someone, I’m sure,” Stan chimed in, doing an even more uncanny impression of him that made Richie convinced they had both practiced.

“But I am not here today to react well or poorly to losing. I would choose to react poorly! Nay, I am here only to blow shit up with my best friends,” Bev finished, capturing his faux gravitas and the flourish he gave to the admirals above on the day of the test.

The bridge burst into laughter and Richie couldn’t help himself. “God, I was not cut out for command. I don’t think I have ever _seen_ Admiral Cornwall so angry before.”

“And she has not been so angry since,” Stan added. “I think the worst part was, you didn’t do too badly.”

Bev laughed the loudest, with her full body, eyes crinkling. She looked like she had gotten more sleep over the past week. It was good. She deserved it, after everything. She deserved a nice, calm mission with a crew she picked to be there.

Bev sat up straighter as the asteroid field came into immediate view. The atmosphere on the bridge quickly shifted, as everyone attended their stations. Livvy was providing operations support, prepared to shift the shields where necessary as they navigated through the asteroid field.

As they drew closer to the field, it felt as if the way forward was swallowed up by the field. It was dense, and the electromagnetic readings on the monitor next to Richie were so strong that Richie could pinpoint exactly where this section of the galaxy was surveyed in the Ocampan report. It was a rather nasty field.

Even Stan was calm, however, because Patty was calm. He had shown her a way through the field and she had told him how they would navigate it. If they were not already sleeping together—which Stan _refused_ to disclose—they certainly would have after this. He had told Stan as much earlier, which earned him another _beep beep, Richie_.

“Navigation ready?” Bev asked.

“Aye, Captain Marsh,” Stan said, eyes glued to his station.

“Engineering, is she ready for some turbulence?”

“Yes, Captain Marsh,” Mike’s voice rang out through the comms.

Bev looked to Patty, who nodded back, hands levitating over the ship console. Bev gave the signal to proceed, and with no ounce of hesitation, Patty accelerated the Dauntless forward into the field.

The outermost edge of the asteroid field was mostly large asteroids, farther apart, but the field looked denser as they pressed through. Patty looked entirely unconcerned, hands dancing across the controls without looking down, like she was playing in a symphony orchestra. Stan kept his eyes on his console as they pulled ahead into the asteroid field.

“It looks like it’s about to get rocky,” Patty said, a wild grin flashing across her lips as she accelerated deeper into the field.

The Dauntless was nimble, sliding through the larger asteroids without so much as tilting the ship. But the deeper they went into the field, the greater the turbulence. From Stan’s star map, they were barely into the field.

Patty’s face lit up when they hit their first major bump. No collision, but the first significant object they had to dodge. Patty piloted expertly, and he never once doubted her, but it made the ride bumpier, especially as the volume of debris grew and started to bounce off the Dauntless’ shields. Stan turned around to smile at Patty as she laughed, whooping excitedly as she flipped the Dauntless 180 degree vertical, to slide between two medium asteroids. Their eyes met for the briefest moment as the ship flew vertically for the longest seconds ever.

Turbulence. Turbulence. Mike and Bill were in engineering, Audra was in security, but everyone else was on the bridge, except Eddie.

“Well, this is no Kobayashi Maru, so I can see my expertise is not needed here. Captain Marsh, you have the bridge,” Richie said, making Ben chuckle from next to Bev. But Bev just stared at him, head tilted, as he took advantage of his long strides to speed off the bridge.

***

_Stardate 2250.125 | 0920 hours_

By the time Richie reached the med bay, the turbulence had worsened. The gravity generators were holding strong, but it still made for a bumpy walk down the hallway, with one hand braced against the wall. Richie rounded the corner of the hallway leading to Eddie’s office. He had only been there a few times, when Eddie would drop his work back in his office on the way to dinner.

As he approached the doors, they slid open automatically. He couldn’t immediately see Eddie, and thought he had miscalculated, that perhaps Eddie was in his room. As he walked through the doors, however, Richie saw him, strapped into what looked like a flight attendant seat in the corner of the room that definitely didn’t come standard. Eddie’s head snapped up when the doors opened, and he stared at Richie, confused, before squeezing his eyes shut at the next bump of turbulence.

“Eds, you look—ridiculous,” Richie said, finally, the turbulence easier to handle when he was standing still.

Eddie frowned but he looked too distressed to be angry. “Shut. The fuck up,” he said weakly, gripping the safety belts as the Dauntless rumbled through space.

Richie took several long strides across the room until he gripped the belts across Eddie’s chest. Eddie looked at him, eyes wide and concerned. Richie started to undo the buckles and Eddie grabbed his hands, stopping him. The tendons in his hands bulged, almost red through his pale, clammy skin.

“Listen, Eds, just come sit down on the ground, with me. I’ll sit there with you. I promise you’ll feel better than strapped into this thing, okay?”

Eddie gritted his teeth but let go of Richie’s hands, letting him help. “Don’t fucking call me that.”

“Sorry spaghetti,” Richie substituted, fidgeting with the buckles until they came loose. The second the last one dropped to Eddie’s side, the Dauntless lurched unevenly again, and flipped vertically. The gravity did not give out, but he gripped Eddie’s shoulders to steady him.

Once Patty righted the ship, he pulled Eddie onto the ground with him and gently moved them both until they were leaning against the wall. Richie released him as soon as Eddie was securely against the wall, but as he settled next to him, shoulder to shoulder, Eddie gripped his wrist tightly, squeezing until it hurt. Richie let him. Eddie brought his knees up to his chest, resting his feet flat on the floor and seeming to try to dig his heels in.

“The floor is disgusting,” Eddie complained.

“Well, then maybe you should clean your office better.”

“Oh, I should clean my office better? Me? Have you ever once returned a single dish to the mess hall? Is there a floor under all the shit in your office? We’ve been here for a fucking month, man,” Eddie growled.

“I took that mug back yesterday morning.”

“Shut up,” Eddie said, teeth clenched, voice coming out in almost a hiss. The Dauntless lurched and he squeezed Richie’s hand so hard it hurt. Richie squeezed back.

“Patty seems pretty confident about the flight path,” Richie said softly, staring at his hands. Eddie kept flexing his fingers, loosening his grip on Richie’s wrist before squeezing tightly again.

“I trust Patty,” Eddie said, jaw still clenched. “I just fucking hate flying.”

The Dauntless lurched again. If Richie focussed, he could hear the gentle ping of debris off their shields. He did not focus. Instead, he stared as Eddie released his wrist and gripped his hands—both his hands. He pressed his side closer up against Richie, squeezing his hands so hard that it made Richie’s fingers ache. He squeezed back. Eddie’s hands looked so small in his, even as they were red from the force of gripping first the seatbelts, then Richie’s wrist, and now his hands. They shook gently in his as the Dauntless continued to swerve through space.

Richie shuffled, using his legs, away from the wall. Eddie looked up at him, eyes flashing with fear and concern, but Richie just maneuvered, not releasing Eddie’s hands, until he was facing him. He folded his long legs awkwardly, blocking Eddie’s spot against the wall with his knees. He shuffled close enough that their shins were touching, trying to give Eddie the sense that he could keep him against the wall if the Dauntless’ gravity faltered.

Richie cleared his throat. “So, why does a doctor who’s scared of space join Starfleet? You never told me.”

Eddie met his eyes. “You never asked. It was the farthest I could get away after my divorce.”

Married. Huh. “Did your ex take the planet in the divorce?”

Eddie rolled his eyes, even as the Dauntless felt like it was tilting downwards through the asteroid field. “We were just wrong for each other. Got married too young and because it was what our parents wanted. And then we got divorced young.”

“But why space? Why not, like, Canada or some shit?” Richie asked. “Or is your fear of flying only surpassed by your profound fear of caribou?”

“Fuck off. Fuck off. You’re so fucking annoying,” Eddie said, swearing through gritted teeth. “I wasn’t my own person when Myra and I divorced. I don’t think I had ever been my own person before. I had a very sheltered childhood. The last thing my mother would have wanted was for me to be in space. I thought it would be a good place to start looking for myself.”

Richie swallowed hard. He didn’t know what to do with that. “Jesus, Eds. Way to go all honesty and soul-bearing on me.”

“It’s refreshing. You should try it sometimes,” Eddie said, shifting one of his feet enough to kick Richie’s shin.

“Yeah, yeah, we get it, Richie’s repressed and uses humour to deflect.”

“See? There you go, you’re already getting it,” Eddie said, squeezing Richie’s hands.

His grip had loosened as they talked. Richie’s fingers still ached from the squeezing, but he could shift his grip and feel blood returning to his fingertips. He had small dents in the back of his hands, dug between his tendons, where Eddie’s nails dug into his skin. The crescents were red and angry, starting to swell slightly as Eddie’s fingers relaxed their grip.

When Richie raised his head, he could feel the ship around them tumble and lurch, and the artificial gravity strain to accommodate. The air around them seemed to grip their bodies, trying to keep up with Patty’s flight path. Each shift of the Dauntless, the gentle grip of the grav shifted them back to centre. They swayed gently, bodies together, as the ship ricocheted through the night’s sky. Eddie met his eyes and smiled. Why was it that every time he smiled it felt like Richie’s chest would burst?

“Did you find out?”

“Find out what?” Eddie asked, tilting his head against the sway of the ship.

“Who you are?”

Eddie’s eyes crinkled as his smile deepened, mouth slightly parting. “Yeah. Still learning.”

Eddie confused him and Richie had been spending as much time as possible not thinking about it. He wasn’t sure what else to think about when it was just the two of them on Patty’s hell flight through the void, holding hands on the floor of Eddie’s office, shins pressed together, with Eddie spending too much time staring right into his eyes.

Eddie didn’t talk to him for almost two full days after Richie made him angry that day. He did not laugh at Richie’s jokes, although Richie had seen his lips curl up at a few. He and Audra had switched places, like they were in fucking middle school, but the joke was on Eddie because he and Audra caused maximum ruckus at the table.

By the third day, Richie had resolved to apologize. He had woken up at 0500 hours after two hours of sleep but was committed to reversing his sleep schedule so he dragged himself to their spot in the mess hall early. Eddie, like some sort of automaton, was already in the mess hall, sitting alone where he usually sat when he did sit next to Richie. When Richie sat down next to him that morning, Eddie scowled at Richie still being in off-duty clothes. Richie opened his mouth, not sure whether to apologize or complain.

Before he could speak, Eddie gave him what Richie could only describe as a side hug, Eddie’s hand landing on the back of the neck and rubbing small circles into his skin, casually, as if his fingers did not trace molten lines across his skin and as if Richie was able to breathe while he was that close.

“I’m glad you’re back,” Eddie said, smiling a little, before looking back down at his PADD.

Since then, they had been back to talking. More than talking, however, Richie felt a little bit like he was being followed. Eddie, having little active work, started spending more and more time in Richie’s office. It was a hot destination these days. But unlike Bev, who came by his office when she needed an escape from the bridge, or Stan, who would come by with correspondence from home, from their parents, or Mike, who had started to visit after he found out about their shared love of old, pulpy sci-fi novels, Eddie stayed there for hours at a time.

Others came by while Eddie sat there sharing Richie’s desk. He spent his time listening to Richie explain data from the anomaly or speculate on the surface conditions of KN-1-3-9, or else sat there quietly next to him working through his clerical files, his inventory controls, and his staffing on his PADD.

He was not sure why Eddie kept showing up in his office, halfway through Alpha shift every day, and staying until Richie signed off for the day. All he did was complain, about how Richie kept his office too warm, about his taste in music ( _you have centuries of music to choose from and all your music comes from the 1980s? / It’s not my fault the human race peaked so early_ ), about how Richie could never stop moving, always bouncing his knee or tapping his pen or tapping his fingers against the desk. Eddie came back each day, usually with lunch, and stayed until they went to dinner together.

“What about you?” Eddie asked, eventually. When Richie met his eyes this time, Eddie did not look frantic. He still swayed with the shift of the Dauntless but it was as if he didn’t feel it. His fingers were still intertwined with Richie’s. He traced small circles on his hand with his thumb.

“Hmm?” Richie was not certain how he was supposed to think while Eddie did it.

“Why astrophysics?” Eddie said, squeezing his hands.

“Smoked a lot of weed in high school and thought space was cool, so I applied to MIT. Got in. Here we are,” Richie said, shrugging.

“You’re lying.”

Richie scowled, trying not to stare at Eddie’s thumb, which was drawing stranger and stranger patterns on his hand. “Dude, just because I don’t have a sob story doesn’t mean I’m lying.”

“A sob story?” Eddie asked, raising his bushy eyebrows. Richie wanted to flatten the crinkled brow with his—

“Yeah, boo hoo, my marriage was bad and my mom was mean and now I’m suffering in space,” he said, imitating Eddie’s voice.

Eddie kicked him in the shins again, but he was biting back a laugh. “Asshole. You’re still lying.”

“Ooh, spaghetti, read me baby,” Richie cooed. All he got was another kick to the shins.

“You’re lying! Who gets a PhD? Who? You could have gotten into Starfleet with a two-year.”

Richie shrugged, uncomfortable. “I mean, fine. I’m lying a little. That did happen. Stan and I wrote our entrance essays on our phones, lying under the stars, high as fuck. But I always liked the stars.”

“Why?” Eddie asked. He leaned closer to Richie, pulling his knees away from his chest enough to tuck his feet under Richie’s legs, where they crossed in the centre. Richie rested the weight of his legs on Eddie’s shoes.

“My mom,” Richie said, finally. He stared down at his lap. Eddie’s wide, sincere eyes were too much. “Her great-grandmother was a Starfleet officer, one of the first, after the Federation was formed. Two generations of Starfleet officers followed. Mom was the first one who didn’t go to space, but she kept all of their memories. I grew up with the stories.”

“Your mom sounds nice.”

“She is. I miss her,” Richie said, adding the last part so soft he thought Eddie wouldn’t hear it.

For the longest time, Eddie stayed silent. It was like they were suspended in time, bodies vibrating in concert to the movement of the Dauntless. Richie felt as if he were caught between two worlds—the turning and tumultuous world of the Dauntless where he was spiralling through space, faster than most humans had ever travelled before or would travel in their life times, and the still, tranquil world of where his body touched Eddie’s. Their hands were still twisted together, but Eddie’s thumb had stalled its gentle movements and instead pressed down on his own thumb. The weight of his legs rested on Eddie’s shoes, the same ones he wore when he stormed into and out of Richie’s room before Richie could process it. His socks were blue this time, science officer blue, but still the argyle pattern.

When Richie looked up again, Eddie was still staring at him. His jaw was relaxed, lips slightly parted. His lids were low on his eyes. Richie could not feel the Dauntless anymore. He could feel Eddie’s hands and his shins and his feet and the pulsing growing in his own head as he stared at Eddie’s lips. If Eddie had not just had an anxiety attack, if they were not tumbling through space, if he had not just talked about his divorce, from a woman, then maybe, _maybe_ Richie would have leaned across the shrinking gap between their bodies, still holding Eddie’s hands, and pressed their lips together.

“We’re through,” Eddie said suddenly. Richie blinked. “The asteroid belt. Patty did it.”

Ben’s voice rumbled over the comms, calm but laced with the echo of a laugh, thanking everyone for their patience and noting that the Dauntless was unscathed and they had saved three days on their journey. The bridge was probably a blast through the field. He had missed the opportunity to watch Stan through it all. He was probably torn between absolute terror at the choice he made and total awe at Patty’s expertise.

Richie knew Bev spent the whole time watching their flight path, enraptured. Richie loved space and he enjoyed spaceflight, but he was not alone in that. Stan enjoyed his and Richie’s deeply successful academic misdeeds, but was not one for pointless, physical dangers. Bev, on the other hand, had a carefully calibrated reckless streak, at once both wild and perfectly contained. It was the two of them who had run around, Richie playing distraction while Bev hotwired whatever small craft they could find on a Saturday night in the deepest pits of academy exams to blow off steam. Bev and him screamed and laughed, driving cars too fast down the highway or flying low-level crafts through ill-policed country airspace. He hoped Bev had enjoyed the flight path, that it made her think of the academy.

Richie squeezed Eddie’s hands before dropping them to his side, his fingers aching from where they touched even though he could no longer feel the pain. Instead, his fingers ached to be held again, to hold Eddie’s hands in his own. He was glad he could be here. He was glad Eddie was not alone, strapped into a chair, as the Dauntless hurtled through empty, lonely space. He wanted to say as much.

“Let’s take the rest of the day off,” Richie said suddenly, head snapping back up.

Eddie’s brow furrowed. “It’s—we are barely through Alpha shift.”

“So?”

Eddie gave him a funny look. “You mean, you’ve spent the last month looking at the hole in space and _now_ you want to relax?”

“Not a hole,” Richie said, already regretting having slipped up calling the anomaly that this week. It was not a hole. He just didn’t know what it was. “But, yeah, let’s play a bit of hooky. Get some chips, some pizza, hell, some vegetables with dip. We can play video games in my room,” Richie said, barely getting through the sentence without stumbling.

“I’m not very good at video games,” Eddie said. “Wasn’t really allowed to play them growing up.”

“Funny since your mom’s been playing with my heart,” Richie said, grasping his chest dramatically and cackling as Eddie delivered another swift kick to his shins. Richie tried to dodge the kick, unfolding his legs and scrambling to his feet.

“Fuck you. Teach me how to play, I’ll kick your ass,” Eddie said, voice raising.

Richie extended his hand, holding it out to Eddie. Eddie gripped it and let Richie pull him from the ground barely stumbling. “Oh, spaghetti, you are _so_ on.”

Eddie did not complain when they left his office before he could tidy up, and did not complain that Richie’s room was so small that they moved throughout the day from his desk, to his floor, to his bed, knees knocking as Eddie got better and better at every game they played. He did not complain later that day when they picked lunch up from the mess hall replicators and Richie grabbed pizza, fries, and a vegetable platter with more ranch than Eddie cared for. Instead, the day slipped away until it was nearly midnight and Eddie finally left, eyes hooded from exhaustion but face split with a beaming smile.

Richie was so fucked.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stan, Bev, and Richie have a heart-to-heart; the crew of the Dauntless reach the anomaly; and maybe, just maybe, Richie was correct.

_Stardate 2250.130 | 1120 hours_

Richie’s day started out fine. He hadn’t slept enough, but that wasn’t new. He woke up far too early and ended up shuffling into the mess hall, regulation shirt on inside-out _and_ backwards, just before 0430 hours. It was too early for the end of Delta shift and too early for most Alpha shifters, so the mess hall was a sad scattering of people, loosely clumped together into people who were absorbed in their work and people who had come from a boozy night off. The sole person at the end of the mess hall was, as always, Eddie, sitting next to Richie’s end spot at their table.

When Richie sat next to Eddie, whispering out a coarse _hey_ , Eddie turned and immediately frowned at him, telling him to fix his shirt. Richie did so, there in the mess hall, meeting Eddie’s eyes defiantly. He got stuck in his shirt, and by the time he had pulled it off his head, Eddie had left the bench and was standing at the replicators. When he returned, tray in hand, he nodded approvingly at Richie’s shirt and set down a tray of food in front of Richie. Food and, blessedly, coffee. Richie didn’t even complain that the pancakes were made with oat flour and they had fruit instead of chocolate chips, and that Eddie had grabbed him yet another of his smoothie concoctions, this one bright green but smelling of citrus. He ate every bite.

His early start meant that he left the mess hall shortly after their—well, their _friends_ —started to trickle in. He had been making it to more meals, but as they drew nearer to the anomaly Richie wanted to ensure he had all the meagre data they had accumulated organized and accessible. He wanted to get an early start in hopes of an early end to the day, a chance to squeeze in some extra sleep before tomorrow. Before he finally got to lay eyes on what had been eluding him and use the Dauntless’ top of the line scanners to find out what the _fuck_ it was.

The data coming through on KN-1-3-9 proved interesting, if unenlightening. There seemed to be extreme fungal activity on the surface of the planet, lush with a thriving and diverse mycological system. It meant there were likely many other organisms, as predicted, on the surface of the planet. Richie thought he may have to beg and plead to get a trip down to the surface himself, out of sheer curiosity.

The final few hours of data compilation proved onerous, as Richie sifted through duplicated data sets that all showed the same thing—as far as the long-range sensors could tell, there was nothing in that patch of space off KN-1-3-9 at all.

Well, not nothing. Richie’s time with the Ocampan report suggested that the readings the sensors were receiving about the anomaly were standard for the patch of space, including the radiation levels and the temperature. What it all meant was just out of reach. The sensors picked up something, some motion, something growing in size, but there were no unusual mass or energy spikes.

Richie was holding out hope for a sensor problem. Mike had filled him in on the state of the sensors out this way, describing the significant repair efforts each sensor required. It set them back by a half day, although they were still ahead of schedule from their Stan-and-Patty hell stunt. Most of the sensors had not received their required maintenance in decades. Richie had hoped to retrieve some visual data as they neared the final sensor, the one right off KN-1-3-9 that had picked up the anomaly, but the visual scans were coming through as corrupted.

Worst of all, however, Richie’s productivity had ground to a halt as time stretched on past 0900 hours, then past 1000 hours, without Eddie appearing in his office. He had always—as much as _always_ could be construed to mean for the past 9 days—arrived at Richie’s office between 0900 and 1000 hours and stayed until Richie was done work or until team dinner, whichever came earliest. It was usually dinner. Eddie liked his routines, which was why he was always there by ten, why he always brought coffee for both of them, why he always sat in the same chair at the same angle and had commandeered a corner of Richie’s desk that he, quote, _wasn’t to enter_.

Richie was never one for routines. They did not seem to stick. It was why he spent the better part of his adult life switching sleeping cycles like clothes he had outgrown, each cycle fitting worse than the prior and leaving Richie perpetually fatigued. Despite this, he had gotten used to waking up in the mornings, eating breakfast with his friends, working alone for half of Alpha shift, then working with Eddie the rest of the day until dinner rolled around and they bundled together again. He had gotten used to not crawling back to his office after dinner but instead working in his room, often with Eddie there, laying on his couch with a book, prattling on about the perils of overwork but still letting Richie sit at his desk for hours. It was well within Eddie’s rights not to come to Richie’s office every day. It still felt strange. Richie did not want to unpack why.

As Richie dwelled on this, the pneumatic doors hissed open. His face split in a smile when he jerked his head up, expecting to see Eddie coming through the door. Instead, Stan and Bev stood in his doorway, shoulder to shoulder, donning matching smug looks. Richie tried to keep his smile at full blast. Of course he was happy to see them.

“Expecting someone else, Rich?” Bev asked lightly, crossing the room in a few short strides before dropping down into Eddie’s spot. Stan followed her, taking the second chair at Richie’s desk.

“Asking questions you have assumed the answer to, hoping desperately for a reaction, Bev?” Richie retorted. This made them both laugh, but Stan didn’t so much as smile. “Please, spare laugh? Spare laugh _Lieutenant Commander Uris_?”

Stan went pink around the ears but scowled. “I don’t like to encourage you to deflect.”

“Oh?” Richie asked, raising his brows and leaning back in his chair. “What am I deflecting about?”

“Eddie,” Stan said. He was never one to mince words.

Richie most certainly was, however. “Aw, Staniel, are you jealous? Don’t worry, he can never have what we have. Full-time best friends, part-time lovers? Our bond is unbreakable.” Stan groaned. Bev cackled. Richie knew who the fun friend was.

“If you ever call me that again, I’ll break more than our bond,” Stan said, growling.

“Why, if we aren’t lovers, then what are we? Was I just a warm body to you?” Richie said, raising his voice into a higher pitch and placing a hand over his heart.

Stan opened his mouth to reply, but Bev cut him off with a piercing look. “You _just_ complained about him deflecting.”

Oh, goody. They were on the same side again. Early in their friendship, in a spot of arrogance, Richie had thought he was the anchor to the friend group—that he was Stan’s best friend, and Bev’s best friend, and the two of them were friends to the extent that they all spent time together. He had not really thought of the two of them as friends, except by association. He and Stan caused minor academic havoc together because they both liked the clever pranks, and he and Bev went joyriding together because they both liked the danger, even well into their thirties.

Before Richie knew it, however, the two of them had clicked. He was sharing Stan, _his Stan_ , with someone else. Instead of it feeling like Richie had lost something, the exclusivity he enjoyed for so long, he was thrilled that someone else loved and cared about his Stan, with and because of all his oddities. That being said, the two of them mostly employed their power in concert to gang up on Richie at every possible opportunity.

“Not that either of you actually asked a _question_ , just waltzing in here and insinuating all over the place,” Richie said, extending the _sin_ in insinuating into a leer, “but there’s nothing to tell about Eddie. We’re being friendly.”

“Friendly?” Bev asked. She learned forward in her chair, face kind but incredulous. “He has been in your office all day every day this week.”

“He’s not here now,” Richie said, intentionally keeping his voice light.

Bev rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but that’s only because of what happened in Security.”

Richie frowned. “What happened in Security? Is Ed—is everything okay?”

He realized his mistake as he was speaking and tried desperately to force it into a stutter. For what it was worth, they did not look _entirely_ unconvinced. Stan squinted at him.

“Some of Audra’s cadets were playing laser tag with phasers,” Stan explained, still eyeing him. “They were set to stun, but a couple of them got a few too many hits.”

Richie had not noticed the knot in his stomach until it loosened. As he eased back into his chair, he realized that it must have been there since 1000 hours passed without Eddie stepping through his doorway. Fuck. He had, by no means, intended to get so used to him being there. It wasn’t like they talked the whole time. Hours would go by while Richie pored over the information from the anomaly, not feeling the passage of time. He would raise his head, finally, and Eddie would be sitting in the chair, perfect posture finally slipping as the hours stretched on, staring quietly at his PADD, or occasionally, at Richie. He never knew what to say to that.

He cleared his throat when he realized they were both staring at him, waiting. “Audra must be mad.”

“She is,” Bev nodded. “Not as mad at Eddie, though. Audra kept trying to retell the story of when he and his team showed up down there and she couldn’t get it out from laughing so hard.”

Richie laughed, despite himself. “Sounds about right. Ruined his schedule.”

“Yes,” Stan said, leaning forward and tapping on Richie’s desk. “His schedule of coming here every day.”

“Oh, fuck off, Stan. Why aren’t we talking about your love life? Or Bev’s?” Richie said

“Oh, so there’s a _love life_ now,” Bev said, also leaning forward in her chair. “A minute ago, there was nothing to tell.”

Richie looked between them, eyes flitting between Stan and Bev, their gazes both piercing. He never felt like an open book, but under their matching stares he was laid plain. Stan looked concerned, searching Richie’s face for something. He was always protective, always. It had just gotten worse since the Gaia. Richie was pretty sure that if he had not shown up that day on the Dauntless, Stan would have found him and dragged him, despite his surly exterior. Bev’s eyes were gentler, kinder, like she was ready to listen, but curled around that kindness was a fierce protectiveness. He knew the look. They could see right through him, they always could, but they were good friends and did not always try.

Richie wanted to summon the energy to say something deflective. He wanted to ask Bev about the shared bathroom again, beg for details about the times they’ve inevitably forgotten to lock both doors. He wanted to tease Stan who was being cryptic as ever about his relationship with Patty, find out if they had kissed or slept together or proposed, or whatever it was Stan did when he was in love. Richie blamed the sleep deprivation for choosing the tender option.

“I missed you two,” Richie said, voice cracking. He swallowed hard, shaking himself. “I’m glad we’re all here. Together.”

Bev’s face softened and she left off a soft _huff_ , almost a gasp. Richie was glad he could still surprise them, but he meant it. Bev reached across his desk, arm weaving through the piles of paper and mugs and dishes, to rest her hand on his arm. “Me too. I’m glad you came.”

Richie felt the back of his throat itch as he met Bev’s eyes. “What, and let you and Stan gossip behind my back? No thanks.”

“Never again.” They both turned to look at Stan, who had gotten paler than he already was. He was sitting up straight, rigid, as if balanced on a pin. His hands clutched the armrests of the chair so hard his knuckles were white. He looked back and forth between them. “We’re not getting separated again. Not after the Gaia. I wish I had been there.”

“I don’t,” Richie and Bev said, voices overlapping but both firm. It startled all three of them, and they looked between each other.

They had been here before, over the years. He dragged Stan with him to the academy, two _mature_ students, like Eddie and Patty, because he wasn’t sure if he was brave enough to go alone. Stan never gave him the chance to find out. They had picked up Beverly quickly. She had come to Starfleet alone and packed up everything that she knew, as people running from their past often did. He hadn’t taken a poll, but he was certain it was high on the list of reasons people enlisted. Bev sat in their first year lectures, rarely in the same spot but carefully placed so she kept a gap between her and others.

They became fast friends after Richie sidled up to her at a party, obscenely drunk, and started singing _Don’t You (Forget About Me)_ at her, at the top of his lungs, while Stan, sober joykill he was, tried to drag him out of the party before he got his ass kicked. Instead, she started singing with him and they performed what Stan would later tell them was the most embarrassing duet in history.

It sounds ridiculous for Richie to even think of it, but there in the bar in his drunken haze—him and Bev screaming together, butchering the lyrics, while Stan gave up trying to get him out of there and started filming the spectacle—Richie had felt as if they were already inseparable. The next day was a Monday, of course, because Starfleet cadets made a habit of using their whole weekend. Bev glided into their morning lecture, looking so composed you would think she had never drank an ounce of liquor in her life. She sat next to him and Stan, flashed them both a smile, and then there were three.

“You’re our friend, Stan. If we had the choice between you being there and not, we would have kept you light years away. We are just lucky that Starfleet assignments did the work for us,” Bev said, her voice calm, comforting, but sharp.

“Yeah, ditto.”

Stan and Bev both turn to look at him. “Ditto?” Stan repeated, face curling into a smile.

“What? I’m allergic to sincerity!” Richie insisted, feeling far too close to tears for it to be true. “I'm glad you were nowhere near that shitstorm. Heads would have rolled if anyone fucked with our best friend. But you’re right, Stan. We’re together now and that’s it. Never again.”

They left unspoken, as friends often do, that someone _had_ fucked with Richie and Bev, and that heads _did_ roll after the Gaia. Bev had been the brave one, of course. She always was.

“What, is being in love making you fucking soft? That was pretty sincere,” Stan sniped.

Richie kicked him from under his desk, pretending he didn’t see the sheen of Stan’s eyes. In exchange, Stan pretended the same. Bev shuffled her chair forward until she could grab both of their hands, and Stan reached for Richie’s without missing a beat. Bev’s eyes shone too, even in the low light of Richie’s office that Eddie always complained of, always turned up the moment he walked in. They were getting fucking sappy in their old age. Richie opened his mouth to say as much, when—

“You will not _believe_ what the little fuckheads down in Security did today. Why do they still make us take the Hippocratic oath when there are—uh.” Eddie was standing between Richie’s pneumatic doors, looking up from his PADD as he stormed in. His eyes darted between the three of them, face schooling into a concerned frown. “Is everything…okay?”

The three of them could not stop their raucous, uncontrollable laughter—laughter that made their bodies shake in unison, gripped together hand-in-hand over the desks, arms aching from the force—until long after Eddie backed slowly out of the room, mumbling about coming back after lunch.

***

Stardate 2250.131 | 1320 hours

Richie had tried, really tried, to get a good night’s sleep. After Eddie had returned the previous day with lunch—on Fridays, Eddie indulged in replicator pasta—his day clicked back into place and he was finished compiling the data before 1600 hours. Richie dragged Eddie to the recreation dock before dinner, determined to challenge Eddie to ping-pong. He had not expected Eddie to not only accept the challenge, but to shut him out 10-0. It was embarrassing. Ben, on his way out of the library, had stopped to watch, not-so-discretely filming them undoubtedly to show to Bev later.

The day rolled along from there, first to dinner where the bursting table again lit up the mess hall. The mess hall was louder than when the Dauntless left, but not just because of the captain’s tables. As the crew started to understand Beverly, what sort of person she was and what sort of captain she wanted to be, the Dauntless warmed. It needed that warmth. A starship straight out of the factory doesn’t have the ghosts and memories of the years’ adventures yet.

Only Audra left after dinner, cackling about the punishment she was dolling out to her cadets after their stunt yesterday, and she later returned. The rest of the table stayed, elbows bumping together and knees knocking under the table, as the evening crawled on. Bev was preparing the final incident report from yesterday, with Eddie providing vibrant colour commentary on proper phaser training and his efforts to push Starfleet away from letting officers carry on ships because _43% of workplace accidents are from phasers!_ Ben was filling in the more helpful sections. Bill was working on his ongoing report on the sensor maintenance in the sector, but mostly he was distracted by Livvy, chatting about the languages they spoke and breaking out his own poor Vulcan and Romulan to her great amusement. Richie, Stan, Mike, and Patty were locked in a deadly poker game that ended with Eddie leaning far too close over his shoulder to point unhelpfully at Richie’s cards until Patty cleaned him out of his entire trip’s candy supply.

Everyone trickled off to bed eventually, or onto their next shift, and Richie followed suit, laying in his bed for what felt like hours as the data swam over his closed lid, playing on a loop in his mind. He thought he could almost see the anomaly sometimes through the data, but he could not comprehend it.

Richie gave up on sleeping early in Delta shift, dropping down to Engineering instead to follow Mike around. If Mike was confused, he did not show it, and instead started explaining in detail as he completed the warp core maintenance over the shift. It was soothing to listen to him speak. Mike showed him all the cool parts of the warp core—how to fix the injector coils that contained the antimatter particles, how to eject the core in an emergency, how to augment power from other crafts—and Mike let Richie babble about the matter-antimatter reactions that occurred in the warp core.

By the time 0500 hours rolled around, Richie meandered down to breakfast, joining Eddie who gave him a once-over and immediately launched into a diatribe about the consequences of sleep deprivation as if Richie had ever once gotten enough sleep. He rattled off the symptoms and consequences like he was reading from a med student’s outline—poor judgment, mood swings, the importance of building up memory, and so on. Eddie complained like it was a full-body workout. He always talked too loud for just speaking to one person.

Richie must have found it comforting enough, though. One minute Eddie was babbling—diabetes, cardiovascular disease, increased risk of—to Richie in a mostly-empty mess hall. When Richie’s eyes reopened their table was full, as loud as ever, and his head was resting in the crook of Eddie’s neck. For a moment, Richie forgot where he was, who he was with, what he was doing, and turned to press a kiss into Eddie’s collarbone. He caught himself before it was too late. When he jolted upright, Eddie smiled at him, only being a little annoying _you know, sleeping like that is bad for your neck. I would recommend a bed._ Richie’s response that he had a bed recommendation for Eddie earned overwhelming disdain from the rest of the table.

They were just out of range of the anomaly now, cruising along out of warp for the engine conditioning. Stan’s estimate was that the Dauntless would have visuals on the scanners in ten minutes and, assuming it was where the sensors suggested, they would be close enough to see it themselves in thirty.

“Nervous?” Eddie asked, like Richie hadn’t been fidgeting all morning, like he wasn’t pacing on the bridge until Eddie walked in from the med bay and told him he looked ridiculous, like his foot wasn’t tapping out every song in his brain at double-speed so hard his ankle ached.

“Not at all, I am immensely looking forward to seeing the culmination of all my failures mocking me on the giant screen of the bridge.”

“What was the PhD for if you couldn’t even identify a cosmic anomaly? Isn’t that your whole job?” Eddie said, elbowing him in the side. Stan whipped around from his station, landing a glare at Eddie. Richie had to bite his lip to stop from laughing. It was all fun and games when he was making fun of Richie, but someone else? Stan was protective.

“I mean, I figure it’s the same reason you went to med school,” Richie replied.

“You got a PhD to study the physiological impact of space travel on the human body?”

“What? Dude, that’s why you went to med school? That’s so lame. I just wanted people to call me doctor during sex without laughing.”

“You mean people have sex with you without laughing?” Eddie responded quickly, making the bridge erupt in laughter. He walked right into that one. Stan rolled his eyes and turned back to his screens.

Bev was gripping the sides of the captain’s chair, body shaking with the force of containing her laughter. “Good one, Dr. Kaspbrak,” is all she managed to get out without cracking into laughter.

If the bridge had not been energized before, it certainly was now. It was a difficult mission to stay engaged on, even with a good crew. Where the flight was short-term, but long enough to have a large crew, work for the mission spread thin quickly and most of the crew was running down discrete projects sent over by Starfleet. If you were a real keener, like some of Richie’s underlings, you made your own projects by analyzing and submitting data on nearby planets to Starfleet.

Today was different. The bridge was full, every seat staffed with personel and standing room growing scarce. Anyone with an excuse to be on the bridge was there. Eddie’s excuse, as he announced to the room when he first stepped in, was that he had to be there in case Richie realized it had been a black hole all along and passed out on the bridge.

“No conclusion, Dr. Tozier?” Livvy asked from across the bridge.

Richie shrugged. “I mean, I have an idea, but I dare not say it aloud on the bridge lest our fair navigator implode. He doesn’t like when I hypothesize.”

Stan did not turn around, but from how his spine stiffened, Richie could picture the grimace on his face. “I don’t have a problem with you _hypothesizing._ A hypothesis implies that you have reached a supposition based on evidence. I would _love_ if you hypothesized. I don’t like when you _radically speculate_.”

“Yes, that,” Richie said, nodding. “My current theory is halfway between those, so best not risk it.”

Truth be told, his current theory was close to the sort of hypothesis Stan yearned for. He had not told anyone yet. It was partially that he was worried they wouldn’t believe him, but it was mostly because Richie was not ready to believe it himself.

“Two minutes until visuals,” Stan said. A charged hush settled over the bridge, as if ready to explode at any time upon seeing the anomaly.

Richie righted his PADD in his hands, pen at the ready, prepared to scrawl down every observation the moment it came into sight. He swiped past pages of his notes that looked like the scrawls of a madman lost at sea, data devolving into sketches and large question marks, before returning to coherence (or reaching the peak of incoherence) in his final theory. On a fresh page, Richie could barely keep from scribbling his thoughts down. Eddie was staring at him, Richie could tell from his peripherals, but he refused to meet his eyes. Eddie, undeterred, shuffled closer to him until their elbows brushed together.

No one was worried. The astrophysicist on the ship couldn’t identify the cosmic anomaly they had been approaching for a month of their lives and no one was _worried_. He couldn’t even blame them. All the evidence suggested that Starfleet’s long-range sensors in this part of the quadrant were in such a poor state that the data was fundamentally unreliable, that the lack of data was unsuspicious, that it was possible, as Eddie suggested, that they would finally get a visual and it would just be a fucking black hole.

A speck appeared on their long-range sensors and the bridge screens activated. Richie sucked a breath in, relieved that he was right, at least in part, that despite the _nothing nothing nothing_ of the data, there was something there. It wasn’t until they drew closer than Richie stopped breathing. Bev stood from the captain’s chair, frowning, and Ben stood close beside her. Stanley peeled his gaze away from the monitors. Richie thought he would throw up.

“Is that—“ Bev started, swallowing the rest of her sentence as they drew nearer. It was.

“But that’s—that’s impossible,” Stan said, now standing from his monitors, pacing towards the bridge window like a closer look would change his mind.

“Holy _fuck_ Richie. Richie,” Eddie said, tugging his arm urgently like Richie couldn’t see it, like the hand holding his PADD wasn’t gripping the screen so tight he might break it and like he had managed to write down a single thing since it came into view. “Richie, you were _right_.”

The anomaly occupied more of the bridge screen as they drew nearer and nearer. Although Richie could not discern the dimensions without looking down at his PADD, he didn’t need the numbers to tell him what he was seeing.

Richie had always felt like ”fabric of the universe” was cliché, that the universe was too strange and unfathomable. Describing it in physical terms was to devalue it, to reduce its enormity and its impossibility into something convenient and misleading. As the anomaly grew larger on the screens, however, it was all he could think. He could hardly breathe.

“It’s a — tear,” Bev said softly, eyes turning on Richie for confirmation. He nodded. He didn’t think he could speak yet.

Starfleet was familiar with tears in the subspace. Starships dropping into warp through the same points in the subspace weakened its integrity and caused horrific ruptures, as the particles of subspace and their world interacted in massive cosmic events. This was not a subspace tear. There were no explosions, no brightly-coloured particles reacting. There was barely anything at all. The tear was larger than a starship, but not by much. It fizzled at the edges in a thin line of bright, blue energy, like nothing Richie had seen before. It didn’t look like the subspace. It was like a diamond ripped out of the night’s sky except—and this, perhaps, was the most unsettling part—the centre of the tear looked unharmed. It looked like any other piece of space. It was only the edges of the tear, if they could even call it that, suggesting something was amiss.

The fabric metaphor was apt because it looked like a patch, like it was bursting at the seams to cover a hole in—in something. Richie wouldn’t want to speculate, but even Starfleet’s youngest subspace rifts were nothing like the subtle, almost delicate, rift in the sky.

“Stan,” Richie asked suddenly, voice serious. Stan did not look at him but immediately returned to his terminal, waiting. “Our distance from it. Is it measured from the edges or the middle?”

“I couldn’t tell before, when we didn’t know it’s shape, but our distance is from the bottom right of the—of it,” Stan said, pulling up a stellar chart of their approach.

“And what’s the distance to the middle of it? What’s the depth?”

Stan typed furiously. In a brighter moment, the sound would have taken Richie back to long nights spent cramped in their tiny room with Bev and Stan, each rotating between the coach, the floor, and the desk as they worked on their assignments and refused to retreat to the library. Then Stan’s typing stopped and he stared.

“That’s impossible.”

“Don’t be a little bitch, Stan. I know what it says,” Richie snapped. Stan didn’t react.

“There’s nothing. There’s no depth. It’s just—it’s just space.”

The silence on the bridge, rather than breaking, was harsher, louder in that the only sounds on the bridge were Richie’s harsh breaths, the eerie beeping of the equipment, and the low hum of the warp core from floors below them. Richie had spent days, too scared to even suggest that he thought it might be a rift in space except in the latest hours of the day, when Eddie was picking up the dishes in his office and clearing off the floor. He told Eddie, in hushed tones, and told him that he didn’t really believe it but he had ruled out all logical possibilities and was venturing into the fearful realm of speculation. Eddie never laughed or suggested he was crazy. He just listened.

“I dub thee—Alexander the Sixteenth,” Richie announced with the utmost solemnity. He attracted the gaze of the entire bridge, who kept one eye on Alexander XVI and one eye on Richie.

“Like…the Pope?” Ben asked, puzzled.

“Yeah. Because it’s hole-y?”

The bridge almost echoed with a resounding groan, and Eddie started swearing under his breath from next to him. If Richie couldn’t make people on the bridge less scared of the unknown, he could certainly make them more annoyed. Eddie eyed him nervously from next to him, and Bev returned to her captain’s chair to make a tentative announcement to the crew. Stan still looked terrified, eyes fixed on the rift. Eddie’s eyes skated over Richie’s face, trying to decipher or predict Richie’s reaction. Eddie pressed their arms closer together, as if to comfort him.

Richie thought he would be terrified by seeing it in person too, when he dared to think he could be right. Instead, Richie’s blood pumped through his veins like it was new. It felt like the blood transfusions he received on the Gaia tearing him from the brink of death. Richie was alive for the first time in months.

***

_Stardate 2250.134 | 1500 hours_

This rift was going to fucking kill him. Richie had started calling it a rift, since tear felt _wrong_ and everyone was tired of his hole jokes. Everyone was tired of him in general. With six hours of sleep spread out over the last three days, Richie had spent nearly every moment thinking about the rift. When he slept, he found himself jolting awake from dreams of the rift. When he closed his eyes, he swore the brilliant blue edges were seared onto his eyelids.

It was his Starfleet-mandated time off. Starfleet was big on taking breaks from your work for optimal focus and mental preparedness. What this meant was that instead of working in his office, Richie was holed up in his room, back aching from the shitty chair at the tiny desk that was too low to the ground for him. Eddie, having taken great personal offence to Richie’s disregard of Starfleet HR policy, insisted that he at the very least required monitoring. Richie didn’t risk making fun of Eddie for the poor excuse lest he change his mind. It was miserable work, but better with Eddie there, even if all he did was make sure Richie ate and tried to hide his active coffee cups. He had been there since breakfast, only leaving so far for a meeting with Patty that was getting close to the one hour mark.

He made more progress on the rift since it came within scanning range. He learned a lot. The earlier prism data was correct in that there were no significant temperature or composition differences from the surrounding space. The rift was so thin it was nearly two-dimensional. It was observable from either side and as far as their sensors could tell, the expanse of space surrounding the hole was indistinguishable from the expanse of space in the centre of the hole.

Richie was still getting duplicate readings. Every prism test resulted in two sets of data. Every scan indicated that there was space inside the rift and space outside the rift, and although they were indistinguishable (radiation, temperature, energy, etc.), they readings were duplicating. Or rather, duplicating was not correct. It had been his original theory—that the scanners were wonky and were duplicating the readings. The problem was that they _were_ getting two distinct sets of data.

Worst of all, Richie thought he knew what it was as the days dragged on, as the data became more consistent, as it became clearer and clearer it was a phenomenon not yet known to the Federation, but that was intimately known to Richie.

The doors to his room opened so frequently without warning these days—locked or unlocked—that Richie had started wearing clothes and stopped whipping his head up each time the door opened. If it wasn’t Eddie making quick and unethical use of his medical override, it was Stan who had a passkey Richie definitely did not give him, or Bev invoking captain privileges to walk through the door regardless of the time of day or Richie’s state of dress.

“Why do I get the feeling Lieutenant Commander Uris doesn’t like me?”

Eddie neatly removed his shoes at the door, setting them down at the door. He frowned at Richie’s shoes, one upside-down and a foot away from the other and, scrunching up his nose, used the very tip of his toes to push Richie’s shoes into a line with his. He crossed the small room and dropped down in the chair across from Richie’s desk that he had complained about all week but sat in everyday, when he wasn’t lounging on the couch.

“Maybe because you still call him Lieutenant Commander Uris and you don’t even say it sexy like Patty does,” Richie suggested. “I thought it was Patty’s day off?”

“It is, but when I was leaving her room, Stan was standing outside pacing in the hallway,” Eddie said. He flexed his fingers, drawing Richie’s attention away from his face, and started to roll up his sleeves. Richie looked away again. _Arms_ , he thought, faintly.

“Ooh, scandalous. Did you say anything to him?” Richie asked.

Eddie moved to his other sleeve, pressing each fold down as he finished it. “I just said good luck. And then he glared at me.”

Richie laughed. “Oh, Stan doesn’t like luck. His choices are informed by tried and true deliberation. No wonder he doesn’t like you.” That earned him a glare in return. “How’s Patty?”

“Uh. She was fine,” Eddie started, voice strained. He looked away from Richie and down at the PADD clutched in his hand. He didn’t turn the screen on. “We had some paperwork to finish up.”

Richie stared at the side of Eddie’s head. He still didn’t look up, or power on the PADD. “Paperwork? What paperwork?”

“We were both Commissioners. That’s how we know Bev, ” Eddie said, voice tight, higher pitch than normal. He finally turned on the PADD and tapped absently at the screen. Richie had no fucking idea what he was talking about.

“Commissioners? Is that a sex thing? Did you, Bev, and Patty get into some kinky sex shit?”

“What?” Eddie shrieked, looking up from the PADD so fast Richie thought he might give himself whiplash. “No! That’s—disgusting.”

“Disgusting? Bev and Patty are beautiful women, Eds, there’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Richie said, waggling his eyebrows and leaning closer to Eddie across the table.

“God. Richie. Please,” Eddie groaned, grabbing his face with both his hands.

“Ooh, you sound just like your mom,” Richie taunted.

Eddie dropped his hands down, almost slamming his fists on Richie’s desk. “If you don’t shut up, I’ll strangle you.”

Richie leaned further forward until he could lay his hands on top of Eddie’s, tracing tiny, teasing circles on the back of his hand. It was for the joke. Eddie didn’t move his hands away. Richie summoned his breathiest voice, “Yes, please, Dr. Kaspbrak, more.”

Eddie looked like he had swallowed his tongue, his mouth dropping open in surprise and his ears turning as red as an engineering uniform. Richie thought he might give anything to see Eddie in red, although his perfectly pressed uniform tragically did the job for Richie nonetheless. To his credit, Eddie still didn’t pull his hands away, although he looked a moment away from his spirit vibrating out of his body.

“For the investigation,” Eddie said, spitting it out like the words cut his mouth as they left. “Into what happened on the Gaia.”

He did not speak so much as let a sound escape from his lips before he could control his reaction, softer than a gasp but more than a whisper. Richie was embarrassed by how scared it sounded. Eddie stared at him from beneath his lashes, as if trying to decide whether it was safe to look at Richie. After a moment, he raised his head, shifting his entire body in his chair, to face Richie steadily. He placed his PADD down on the desk and stopped pretending he was urgently reorganizing his home screen.

“Ah, yes, that circus. So you know all about it,” Richie said, leaning back and pulling his hands away from Eddie. He tucked them close to his body, digging his fingers into his sides.

“I know that harassment and abuse of power was rampant, that Captain Bowers used the Gaia as his own personal playground, pitting people against each other, harassing his crew. I know Captain Marsh was his First Officer and he never let her think for one moment that her opinion was valued. Or anyone else’s, for that matter. I know that it exposed a systemic problem with harassment on starships.”

Eddie paused. His ire from moments earlier was a distant memory. It was replaced with something too soft, too gentle, like Richie needed handling. It was like in the mess hall with Bev and the fucking kid gloves again except—well, except Richie may have needed them.

“I don’t know what happened to you, though. There was never an incident report done,” Eddie continued.

Richie had never spoken to the Commission. He had not even let Bev talk about it with him when she visited during those long months before the Dauntless. Bev was never once cross with him, never impatient. She always apologized for bringing it up, like Richie wasn’t the reason she had opened her mouth in the first place, like she wasn’t being put in the spotlight because of something that happened to _him_. Even as he thought his, he almost heard Bev, leaning in close and holding him in her arms like she did the entire flight home on the Gaia, and telling him that he didn’t make her speak, he had just made her brave. Whatever the fuck _that_ meant.

It did little to ease the guilt that Richie felt, day in and day out, especially now that they were scanning Alexander XVI. Admiral Weyland had gone green when they broke the news. The brass had given Bev the smallest, most inconvenient possible task that she couldn’t excel at—like travelling for a month at warp speed, doing nothing but sensor maintenance, to get to a tiny blip on Starfleet’s radar—and her crew discovered a novel cosmic phenomenon.

Eddie was still staring at him, waiting for an answer to a question he had not asked. His eyes were wide, patient, tracing over Richie’s face like he could follow the fatigue from his lips to his eyes, to the crease that no longer left his forehead when he woke up in the mornings. Richie sighed and bit the inside of his cheek so hard he tasted blood in his mouth when he finally spoke.

“I can’t, Eds. I just—I can’t,” Richie said. He had been aiming for a joke, something to break the fog that settled over the room when Eddie said the word _Gaia_. “I was part of a ground team, something went wrong, and that’s it. Nothing happened.

“If you ever want to talk about it—“ Eddie started.

“I don’t.”

“It’s okay. I can wait.”

Richie almost believed him, except he had been around for a few decades and all those decades told him was that he could believe in Bev, Stan, and not another soul. He had not even told Stan what happened on the Gaia, although he was sure Bev had told him. Stan didn’t say anything to him when he first saw him after the Gaia except _can’t be killed, huh?_ It was exactly what he needed from him.

Then Eddie was moving, shuffling his chair further under the desk until their knees bumped together. He reached a hand over the table, placing a hand on Richie’s crossed arms. He tugged at them until they loosened, until Richie was forced to relax, pulling his fingers from his sides. Eddie tugged until he had Richie’s hands and he placed them on the table.

Every single thought Richie had about the Gaia was ripped from his mind the second Eddie grabbed his arms. His hands were smooth, gentle, as he tugged at Richie, first by the arms, then by the wrists. The pressure of Eddie’s hands, trying to get Richie to relax, to open up, should have felt like it was too much, like it was constricting. Instead Richie felt his shoulders sag and his posture ease. It was like in the simple gesture of taking his hands, Richie was unravelled, lost in the feeling of skin touching skin and Eddie’s eyes piercing his. He thought if Eddie had been so stupid as to ask him again, his voice always too loud even when it was kind, he may have told him about what happened on the Gaia.

He thought that if Eddie had held his hands for a moment longer, he would have done something far more stupid than regurgitate his trauma onto Eddie. Richie thought he might lunge across the desk, take Eddie’s face in his hands, and kiss him until he made that beautiful flush crawl back up Eddie’s neck, and then follow it back down his body with his mouth. Another moment passed, and if Richie had been brave enough, he might have done it. He hesitated, allowing Eddie to say the nine least romantic words in human history.

“Do you want to talk about the anomaly instead?” Eddie asked, finally letting go of Richie’s hands and sitting normally in his chair, which for Eddie, meant sitting so straight you would think someone was still stacking books on his head to teach him good posture.

“You mean Alexander the Sixteenth?” Richie asked. He was at once relieved for the break in the tension and completely uninterested in discussing the anomaly, at least until he had some more time with it.

“No, I mean the anomaly.”

Richie groaned, picking up his PADD. “You’re no fun.”

“What makes this different from a subspace tear?” Eddie asked, surprising Richie. “What? I listen. You said earlier it wasn’t a tear in the subspace. How do you know?”

Richie tried not to think about what happened to his chest when Eddie said _I listen_.

“The subspace is highly unstable. When its particles come into contact with particles from—from our space, the reaction is violent,” Richie said, swiping across the screen of his PADD. He turned it around to show it to Eddie. Eddie squinted from the coach. “See? It’s quite beautiful, really, but much flashier than what we have. Even the youngest subspace tears are like this.”

“So then, what is it?” Eddie asked, leaning back in his chair.

“Great question, Dr. Kaspbrak! God, if only I had time to figure that out between spending every waking minute thinking about the fucking hole in the sky, and every sleeping minute dreaming of what’s going to come through the other side!”

Fuck. He had—he had not meant to say that part. In a minute it was going to be back to harping on his _conspiracy theories_ even though he had spent his entire life looking for a world parallel to theres. Finally the data starts coming through, and it’s not what he expected, but it seems to tell the same story.

Except, Eddie did not look angry. He did not even quite manage a polite surprised look. Instead, his lips curled deliciously into a smile, half-mean, his eyes crinkled and Richie wanted to kiss the corners until they went away.

“So you do know what it is,” Eddie said, voice almost accusatory.

“I don’t know shit.” Richie dropped the PADD back down on his desk, breaking his gaze.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not _fucking_ lying, Eds. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t think it’s a rift in our universe or a rift in the subspace. Why are all the readings doubled? Why are they identical? Why is there nothing but energy from the rift? It has no mass, it has no form. All it has are these fucking heterotrophic readings.”

If Eddie was alarmed, he didn’t immediately show it. “Heterotrophic? Like fungus?”

“Yeah, it’s not my fucking theory of the universe, I’ll tell you that. I reached out to an old friend from MIT, Paul Stamets, for his research. He ended up in Starfleet, wrapped up in top secret shit. Studied _astromycology_ , some made up branch of biology and physics bundled up in the smartest asshat I’ve ever met.”

“You mean smarter and more of an asshat than you?” Eddie asked. There was a compliment in there.

“ _Yes_. Paul’s theory of the universe was closer to a web, a network of mycelium. Total bullshit, right? Except I’m staring at Alexander the Sixteenth and I think it’s a giant fucking hole in the universe. In our universe. And it’s all fucking fungal energy.”

Eddie stared at him, not speaking.

Richie’s panic set in at hearing the words aloud. A lot had been said about him in the scientific community. Stan, despite thinking he was an absolute crackpot, spent a lot of time redacting people’s reviews on Richie’s working, keeping the words _brilliant mind_ and removing the parts that Richie knew said _if not for his more controversial opinions_. Richie was not the only person with those views, but he was the loudest.

Theorizing in his office based on the impossibility of the universe and thesnippets of information from over the centuries of people meeting themselves, or versions of themselves was miles away from acknowledging that at this very moment, the Dauntless was only hundreds of kilometres from another universe.

“I wanted to find another explanation, but I have been worried for so long. The data doubled, and sure it could have been the sensors, but it did not _feel_ like an error. And I was right! I kept looking for another answer because this _cannot_ be the answer, no one will ever believe me, but I haven’t found anything else, and I feel like I’m—” Richie babbled, hoping to drown out the inevitable criticism before it could begin, to convince Eddie to just leave and not ask again until Richie had a better explanation.

“I believe you.”

Richie blinked, words sticking in his throat. “What?”

“You’ve studied this your whole life. Just because it’s novel doesn’t mean you’re wrong,” Eddie said, like it was nothing at all. Richie stared at him, incredulous. “What? Don’t fucking look at me like that. Do you remember when people talked about _alien life_ only to find out that humans were late to the game? That we were the aliens? So, yeah. Whatever. Sue me. I believe you.”

For at least the second time that day (although more likely the thousandth), Richie thought about kissing him. It would have been so easy. He could have leaned across the desk and pressed their lips together, bracing himself on the desk with one hand and holding Eddie gently with the other. He thought he could even have pulled Eddie over the table, grasping him by the neck of his perfect Starfleet uniform.

Before he knew what he was doing, Richie was on his feet. The room was quiet and haunting as he rose, no words passing between them. He was going to do it. He was going to step around the table and take Eddie by the hand. He was going to pull him upright until their bodies were too close and Richie could press his lips to Eddie’s forehead, or cheeks, or _lips_. Eddie believed him.

Richie stepped around the desk, approaching Eddie. He wasn’t nervous or skittish. His locked on Richie’s, head tilted, like he was trying to figure him out. Richie paused. Maybe Eddie had not seen this coming. Maybe Richie had imagined what he thought was _something_ between them over the many long hours in his room, the gentle touches, the breakfasts and dinners. Before Richie decided whether it was worth the risk, Bev’s voice rang through on his private comms channel.

“Richie, I need you up here. There’s something on the other side of the rift. It looks like—it looks like a ship.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dauntless attempts to hail the all-too-familiar vessel on the other side of the rift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CWs: violence, unnamed character death and discussions of death, character distress, existential anxiety, injury. A heavy chapter. All typical of an “action” film akin to Star Trek.
> 
> Sorry for the delay in posting, I definitely got caught up in my SMAU.

_Stardate 2250.134 | 1545 hours_

The two of them careened down the hallway, almost running, Richie taking long strides too quickly as Eddie shuffled to keep up, swearing and yelling down the hallway for people to _get the fuck out of the way_. Eddie grabbed his hand by the time he caught up, swearing at Richie to _stop fucking running it’s so dangerous to run in these hallways_ but kept pace with him the whole time. By the time they reached the elevator, they were both panting, leaning against the walls of the elevator, Richie begging the elevator to go faster. Right before it reached the Bridge, Richie lurched forward, waiting centimetres away from the door. Over the comms, Ben was requesting, quickly, calmly, that every person—on or off-duty—make their way to their stations.

When the elevator opened onto the Bridge, Richie tumbled out, pulling Eddie after him, hands still clasped together. No one paid them any attention, and Richie dropped his hand as soon as he saw the ship on the Dauntless’ screens. His vision swam, his head spinning, and he thought for a moment he would pass out. Eddie grabbed his arm from next to him, swearing viciously under his breath.

The ship looked almost exactly like the Dauntless. It was impossible. The plans for the new Emissary-class vessels were about as top secret as plans got, even within the Federation. Everyone stared between Richie and the other ship, like Richie could explain the _identical space craft_. He was an astrophysicist, not a fucking psychic.

The ship wasn’t quite identical, although Richie was not sure that made it better. It had significant weapons upgrades from the Dauntless, which was meant to be a light, non-combat vessel. The other ship was centred on the other side of the rift, unmoving against the endless backdrop of space. The slim frame of the other ship was augmented by several large plasma cannons. Richie felt like he had been doused in ice water.

“Hails?”

“Unsuccessful. No response yet,” Ben said. He stood at a communications terminal. He attempted the hail again.

“Has anyone looked at its tag?” Richie asked, voice raised to the bridge. Several people stared at him. “It looks like the Dauntless, right? What’s the ship name?”

A ripple of movement fluttered through the bridge, an unfamiliar ensign ultimately getting a lock on the ship’s tag, curling across the side of the craft in the same place the Dauntless’ was. Richie couldn’t contain a gasp at the insignia: _I.S.S. Dauntless_.

“Anyone want to call me a conspiracy theorist?” Richie said. He was laughing, and he expected someone to _beep beep_ him. Maybe it was the fact that his laugh was tinged with hysteria, that his eyes were wild and racing around the room, from Bev, to Ben, to Stan, to the fucking rift and the ship hovering on the other side of it. Maybe they could tell that he didn’t think it was fucking funny at all.

Beverly raised from the captain’s seat, striding across the bridge, approaching a communication terminal as officers lept out of their chairs to give her space. She leaned down into the terminal and spoke. Her voice was clear, calm, but Richie had known her for years. He knew what Bev sounded like when she was scared. He had heard this voice when she found him on that away mission, when she tried to drag him onto the stretcher, when she spent days in the hospital wing.

“This is Captain Beverly Marsh of the U.S.S. Dauntless. You are flying a vessel not registered with Starfleet. Please identify yourself.”

The hail met dead air. Bev frowned but stared ahead at the screen. She mumbled to Ben, confirming that all channels were open, that everyone was at their stations (342/378 reporting, others en route).

“We’re scanning the shit out of that thing, right?” Richie asked the room. Stan nodded, without turning around. He had the schematics of the Dauntless up on his screen, assuming that the structure was largely the same, and the officer next to him was typing long, rapid lines of code.

A vicious sound rang through the Bridge, snapping the tension in the room like a rubber band. They were being hailed. Everyone scrambled back to their stations and Bev glided back to the Captain’s chair, standing in front of it, the highest spot on the bridge, before gesturing at Ben to accept the hail.

Not even years of his research could have prepared Richie for the sight that spread across the Dauntless’ screens when they accepted the hail. He knew others on the bridge must have been reacting—he could hear Eddie barely containing his _what the fuck_ —but all he could do is stare. The opposing, identical Bridge stared back.

It was identical, in every way possible—the wide, round shape of the room, the elevator directly behind the captain’s chair, the sleek, slim counters, the state-of-the-art computers, the modern shade of blue. Most starkly, however, was the identical crew. Richie locked eyes with his counterpart and felt sick.

In the centre of the room, standing in the same spot as _their Bev_ was someone who Richie may have mistaken for Bev, if her hair had ever been that long, her features that sharp, her eyes narrowed. Even at her angriest moments, Bev’s features were kind, gentle. She had a quiet sort of anger. The Captain of the I.S.S. Dauntless had no trace of kindness, nothing soft.

She was not alone on the Bridge. There was a Stan, a Patty, a Ben, an Audra, a Livvy. Richie couldn’t quite look away from himself, however. It was his day off, on this Dauntless. He was still in regulation clothes, but he was dishevelled, shirt untucked. He hadn’t shaved in three days and his chin was scratchy. He had caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror this morning and he looked tired, the dark circles under his eyes risking becoming permanent, the crease in his forehead deep. His hair was growing messier, curls becoming unruly. He thought he looked nothing like the other Richie, the imposter, who was clean-shaven, hair cropped short, wearing a perfect uniform and standing very straight, right behind the imposter Eddie.

“This is Captain Beverly Marsh of the I.S.S. Dauntless. We do not recognize _Starfleet_ as an authority. We are agents of the Terran Empire,” Imposter Beverly said, her voice cold as she spoke, staring her counterpart directly in the eyes.

“This is impossible,” Beverly said, not breaking her gaze from the Imposter.

The other Bev smiled, but it was cruel smile, twisting her lips unpleasantly. “If your imagination is so limited, perhaps.”

“There is no Terran Empire,” Bev said.

“There is no Starfleet,” Imposter Beverly said cooly. The smile—if one could call it that—was still plastered across her face. “Dr. Tozier?”

The Imposter Richie looked at the Imposter Eddie for a moment, who nodded imperceptibly. He cleared his throat. “Mirrorverse. A weaker one, from the looks of their vessel.”

It was _his voice_ , Richie’s voice, coming from that imposter, a voice that was always warm and joking and happy that fell from those lips cruel, cold, mean. He felt sick. Eddie, from next to him, squeezed his arm tighter. The Imposter—the _Mirror_ Eddie stood with his arms crossed over his chest, aloof. He looked bored, like encountering an alternate universe was little more than a thorn in his side. Unlike Eddie, always clean-shaven, neat, composed, Mirror Eddie had a grizzly beard, a vicious scowl, a crease on his forehead. You could never really tell what someone was like—the greatest abusers hide in plain sight—but something about Mirror Eddie looked mutual, even violent. A ticking time bomb wrapped in the skin of Eddie, his Eddie, who was firm but never really mean, who could yell but was never really angry.

“And the look of their crew,” Mirror Ben added. “Your _Starfleet_ lets slaves on its Bridge?”

“Slaves?” Bev asked, voice raised.

“Oh darling,” Mirror Beverly said, now laughing. It was a mirthless, icy sound that Richie could feel in his bones. “The Vulcans? The Romanulans? That Andorian bitch? Don’t tell me your universe treats them as equals.”

The energy on the Bridge shifts. A quiet anger could still be fury, and Bev tensed, jaw clenching. She was also afraid. She exchanged a look with Ben, who darted to a comms terminal, awaiting further instructions.

In what Richie could only describe as a numbing terror, the sight of the other Richie, of the other crew, consumed him. Starfleet was not military, despite its ships equipped with weapons, its military rankings, its combat training. Everything that they were taught from the first day at the Academy was: if you’re here to fire a gun, join the military. There were inconsistencies, of course—as Eddie complained, officers carried onboard the ship (the two of them being no exception); however, Starfleet’s mandate was firmly exploratory and diplomatic. To contact new civilizations and share and exchange knowledge.

As a result, either because the training worked or maybe because Richie hated violence to begin with, he had rarely felt the need to draw a weapon, had rarely had to fire one. It was not to say he hadn’t. There was blood on his hands, just as there was blood on all of theirs. It simply wasn’t his starting place, not his default instinct to reach for his phaser. The Terran Empire ship inspired in him a violent terror, his hand itching for his phaser, his eyes darting to the weapons console and thinking about where they would have to hit the other ship, what sort of damage they would need to do to be safe, to stay alive. The threat felt existential. What did it mean to see yourself in the mirror? What was the same and what was changed? What did it mean to break the mirror?

Eddie had not stopped talking, muttering under his breath, words shifting from unintelligible swearing, to mumbled terror, to him trying to ask Richie questions or reassure him. Richie could not speak. He only let himself be trapped in the vice grip of Eddie’s hand on his arm.

“Starfleet is an intergalactic effort advanced by all life and all civilizations. We are a peaceful organization,” Bev said, her voice hard but civil.

Mirror Beverly laughed again. “Oh, how quaint. That will make this far easier. Goodbye, Captain Marsh. It was lovely to meet you.”

The hail feed ended, and for the briefest moment, the Bridge was silent—no typing, no voices, possibly no breathing _again_. Richie was shaking. He could not pull his eyes away from the spot on the screen where he had seen himself, a version of himself. He looked so lifeless, so blank.

“Their weapons are coming online,” Stan said, voice raised as loud as he could get.

The tension on the bridge snapped again, Beverly sitting back in the captain’s chair. “How out-gunned are we?”

“We won’t survive once they power up,” Livvy said from her terminal.

“Can we get to warp in time?”

Stan shook his head. “Not with the core still conditioning.”

She took a deep breath, looking first at Stan, then at Richie. He didn’t know why. He had no answers, he never had. This whole journey out to the edge of the universe to find a rift he couldn’t explain, and they were going to fucking die out here. It was like Bev could see it in his face—the fear, the resignation—and she fixed him with a grim smile.

“Uris, Blum, prepare to engage in evasive maneuvers. Barlett, get out shields up and keep them moving, watch those fucking cannons. Number one, get the evac pods ready.”

Bev opened a ship-wide communication. “This is your Captain speaking. We are in a dire situation. I need everyone to immediately make their way to the evacuation pods. Do not retrieve any of your belongings. This is an emergency situation. Go straight to the evacuation pods. It was an honour to serve with you.”

The transmission cut out as the plasma cannon on the Mirror Ship reached capacity. He and Eddie were the only ones standing, and Richie realized too late, as the Mirror Ship fired and Patty swerved the Dauntless, tossing them into a flight pattern that spun through the void. The artificial gravity held, Bev shouting to redirect non-essential services to the grav.

Stan sat at his computer, rapidly typing in coordinates, him and Patty not even speaking to each other as they plotted their turbulent course through the stars, retreating from the ship but knowing they couldn’t make it to warp in time. They just needed to get the fucking crew off.

Bev oversaw the bridge crew, ordering evasive maneuvers, noting new fire, weapons on the Mirror ship they could not even identify, war-making technology that was perhaps beyond their capacity.

“Ben, evac?”

“30%. Launching first wave of pods.”

“Good. Non-essential bridge crew, get down to the pods,” Bev ordered, leaning forward in her chair as her eyes skated over the bridge. She listed names, sending nearly the entire bridge crew away, leaving only Stan, Patty, Audra, Livvy, and Ben. Audra was leaned over a console, helping Ben activate escape pods. Stan and Patty were still wordlessly dodging the hostile fire. As she reached the end of her list of names, the Bridge crew immediately responding to her orders and filing onto the elevator, she added, “Kaspbrak, Tozier, get out.”

“I’m not fucking leaving you,” Richie snapped at Bev.

“Then make yourself fucking useful,” she hissed back, pointing towards where Livvy was single-handedly maintaining their shields.

Eddie was pale, shaking, but Richie dragged him with him over to Livvy’s console. He pushed Eddie into a chair, physically grabbing Eddie’s chin to twist his face to the console. “Hey, snap out of it. You know how the shields work?” Eddie nodded. “Help her.”

Eddie did, eyes clinging to the screen like if he looked up he would lose his nerve, like seeing the ship on the screen made it impersonal, made him forget about the turbulence, the gut-wrenching jolting of the vessel.

“Evac at 50%,” Ben said. “All ejected. Next pods loading up.”

Richie leaned over another console, not far from Eddie, watching him carefully, but his eyes skated between everyone on the bridge. Their faces were marred with matching terror, just watching as the Mirror Ship continued its relentless fire. Richie sent a distress call to Starfleet, hearing a response immediately from Admiral Cornwall. They made contact the second they saw the Mirror vessel. Richie started to respond, that they were evacuating crew, that they would need retrieval stranded here, 30 days at warp away from earth.

Before he could warn them about the Terran Empire, if he could even find the words, a shot from the plasma cannon made contact with the ship and he was thrown to the floor of the bridge. The shields absorbed most of the hit, but the Dauntless was rattled off of its course, Patty and Stan swaying their seats but recuperating quickly. Eddie lept out of his seat long enough to haul Richie back to his feet, eyes wide and panicked, before returning to the shields.

“That was a big fucking hit, shields at 50%,” Eddie said grimly, his voice shaking.

The Mirror Ship had passed through the rift now, on the Dauntless’ trail, veering evenly through the sky. The shots were almost casual, cursory. They knew the Dauntless was ill-matched to their vessel, that they were an exploration vessel.

“Richie? Get off the comms. Deal some fucking damage,” Bev said.

Richie’s felt himself shake as he crossed the bridge, dropping down in a console with access to their own weapons systems. “Where do I hit?”

“Get their shields down, then their warp core, then comms,” Stan said briskly. “Just like the sims, you got this.”

He breathed slowly, through his nose. He could do this. All their training led to this. He just needed to focus. The Mirror Ship’s weapons fire was unfocussed, lazy, following them through the sky like it was a game and they were enjoying the chase. It was life and death for them, and the lives of everyone on the crew.

“Weak point?” Richie asked.

“Starboard, right under the bridge window,” Stan replied, not losing focus from his flight path.

Richie locked on and fired. The Mirror Ship did not expect the return fire, or maybe they were cocky, because Richie’s shot hit, causing the Mirror Ship to roll through the sky. He did not relent, continuing to fire at that same spot until Eddie’s voice broke through the panic of the bridge to tell them that he had fucking got them, that their shields were down.

“Evac at 80%,” Ben said.

The Mirror Ship changed tactics, its cannon fire more pointed, less careless. Richie continued to return fire. With their shields down, it was easy to cause significant damage, and he carefully targeted the warp core, the engine, the comms, the same places they are normally on _their_ Dauntless. He tried not to look at the escape pods. Most of them made it. Some of them were hit with the plasma cannons. Even as he hit the Mirror Ship, blasting open floors of the vessel, he knew that he was blasting _floors_ that had _sentient beings_ inside, that each successful hit meant someone got spaced, someone died. He bit the inside of his cheek so hard that his mouth flooded with blood.

The next shot from the Mirror Ship made contact with the Dauntless, destroying the remaining shields. Livvy yelled that they lost floor 17, that the hull was breached, that people and equipment were sucked out into the void. They watched them die, before their eyes, but had to keep moving, the Dauntless continuing to lurch through the sky. Richie wished only for a moment that maybe, just maybe, he had taken the Kobayashi Maru more seriously, thought about what it meant to lose lives.

Ben, jaw tense and eyes fixed on his screen, barked out, “Last officers dispatching. It’s just us. Denbrough and Hanlon have done all they can for the engine and are loading onto the pods now. Everyone’s off.” _Or dead_.

“Good. Uris, Blum, hold strong. Tozier, damage update?”

“Their warp core and engine have substantial damage. Can’t tell for sure since they aren’t answering our hails, but I think we got their comms,” Richie said, the words falling out of his mouth as if they needed to escape, as if they were not his own but rather were channeled through him, forced through his lips as he watched more pods escape and more pods get caught in the plasma cannon fire.

“Good. Phillips, Barlett, Tozier, Kaspbrak, get into escape pods,” Bev said suddenly. “Uris, Blum, program a route and get in a pod.”

Richie spun around in his chair. “Bev, I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving Stan.”

“That’s an _order_ Tozier,” Bev said, voice serious, nearly desperate. Richie did not move to stand.

Livvy grabbed Audra, pulling her into the elevator. They were the first to go down, staring back onto the bridge, manic looks of terror, as the elevator doors closed on them.

“Bev—“

“Richie get the fuck off the bridge. I’ll be right behind you,” Bev yelled, angrier than he had ever seen her.

Before Richie could respond, two hands grabbed his arms, hauling him upright. Eddie was shorter than him, but strong, hands firm, and he pulled Richie across the Bridge. He was still pale, shaking, but his eyes were fixed on Richie. He struggled against Eddie’s grip, clawing at his hands, but Eddie continued to march across the bridge, dragging Richie towards the elevator.

“Eddie, I can’t fucking leave her I can’t leave Stan,” Richie begged, wrenching out of his grip. Eddie swore loudly, this time circling an arm around Richie’s waist and hauling him closer to the elevator.

“They’re right behind us, Richie, please,” Eddie insisted, face too close to Richie’s, arms tight around his waist. Eddie was strong but Richie was bigger. They both knew that if he didn’t want to leave, he couldn’t be pulled, that Eddie was strong but that he was bigger, heavier. He could have pulled away, ran back into the Bridge, retaken his seat.

Richie let himself get pulled into the elevator, head spinning as the door closed before his eyes. Eddie was shaking, eyes wet, and apologizing over and over and over again, apologizing for freezing up on the Bridge, apologizing for being scared, apologizing for not being quick enough with the shields like it was _his fault_ that they were being pelted with ceaseless fire from a ship that out-gunned them by miles and that they lost Floor 17, apologizing for pulling Richie away from Stan and Bev.

Richie wanted to reassure him, but he could not think. Richie could only think about the bodies floating in space, both from the Dauntless and the Mirror Ship; the terrible words _we lost 17_ ; the Mirror version of himself; and that maybe, as the elevator doors closed, he was seeing Bev and Stan for the last time. He couldn’t speak, so instead he pulled Eddie close, wrapping one arm around him. Eddie pressed his face into Richie’s shoulder, gasping out weak sobs against him. Richie squeezed him tight, trying to remember what he had to do. He had to get them out. He had to trust Stan. He had to trust Bev. They had to get out. He looked down for a moment, finally looking at Eddie for what felt like the first time in hours. It had been moments, terrible moments. Eddie didn’t look up at him, face still pressed into Richie’s shoulder, tears dampening the fabric. Richie had not noticed when he started crying too.

When the elevator doors opened, they moved without hesitation, remembering the evac procedures, remembering where their pods were. Executive Crew, first door on the right. When they turned the corner into the pod room, they were just in time to witness Audra and Livvy, packed into a single pod. They only got to make eye contact before the pod was ejected.

“Richie, I can’t—“ Eddie started, staring at the pod assigned to him, then at Richie’s pod.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Richie said sharply. “I’m not fucking leaving you.”

He crossed the room, pulling Eddie with him, and his pod opened as they approached. The glass window of the pod was so clear, factory-fresh. It only needed to fly. Richie roughly handled Eddie into the passenger seat, barely enough room for the two of them, before clambering in himself. Eddie was shaking again, and Richie’s own hands shook as he strapped them both into the pod.

There wasn’t space for the two of them, not really, but he wasn’t going to let Eddie fly alone. He wouldn’t make it. They both knew it. Instead, they squeezed into the seats, thighs pressed tightly, shoulders painfully bumping together until Richie finally adjusted so he was leaning against Eddie’s arm and chest, shielding his view of what was about to happen. The pod came to life under his hands, and Richie remembered his training: _they can always get back to earth, they’re the easiest fucking things to fly, and just don’t get hit_. Easier said than done.

Richie closed the door for their pod, the glass sealing tightly to contain them, pneumatics hissing softly, and Eddie let out a small whimper. Richie shook himself, biting hard on his cheek again, more blood. Bev and Stan would be fine. They would be fine. He just had to get Eddie out of here.

As he triggered the ejection, pod counting down to launch, Stan, Patty, Bev, and Ben rounded the corner, immediately loading into pods. He gave Bev a small, apologetic salute, which earned him a strained smile, and launched their pod into space.

The pod was light, rotating several times before Richie could get a handle on the controls. His stomach turned with the twists, head still spinning. He righted the vessel and plotted the course. He sped away from the Dauntless as quickly as the little vessel could go, the course taking them over KN-1-3-9. In the peripherals of the pod, the Mirror Ship was still firing on the Dauntless, its shields demolished now, taking significant damage to its remaining floors. It wouldn’t be long before the ship’s engine gave out, before it was caught by KN-1-3-9’s orbit, before the brand new vessel crashed on a planet in a forgotten corner of the universe.

Eddie was swearing next to him, voice high and eyes squeezed shut, tears still streaming out from under his lids. Richie mumbled empty reassurances as he swayed through space, avoiding debris, trying to follow the two pods ahead of him and hoping that Bev and Stan were not far behind. Eddie’s hand was on his thigh, gripping him tightly like it was the only thing keeping him conscious.

“We’re going to be fine, Eds, I got you,” he heard himself say, not believing a word he said but hoping it was true, hoping that they would just get far enough away from the Dauntless, from the Mirror Ship.

He spoke too soon. The Mirror Ship stopped firing on the Dauntless, for a moment, testing the waters. When it received no return fire, when it saw the Dauntless losing its gravity, being pulled into KN-1-3-9’s gravity, the Mirror Ship steadied in the air and rotated directly towards the remaining escape pods.

The Mirror Ship redirected its fire, a shot from their cannons narrowly missing their pod as Richie swerved at the last minute, more luck than skill. The cannon fire clipped one of the pods in front of them, sending it crashing into the first pod. Both pods spiralled down towards the surface of the planet. Richie swore loudly, following their trail with his eyes. Whoever was piloting appeared to gain control of the vessel enough to soften their descent, the pod still smoking but flying in a steadier pattern. The other pod, which only received impact damage, was descending steadily towards the planet, still too damaged to keep moving.

Eddie had stopped breathing, staring down at the planet. Richie looked at him, trying to meet his eyes. “Hey. Hey. Eds. Eds, honey, please.”

Eddie snapped his neck to meet his eyes, breathing again but shallowly, drenched in sweat. He nodded, not able to form words, searching Richie’s eyes for the answer.

“We have to go down. We have to, right?” Richie asked, begging for an answer. “They could be injured. They need help. We can’t leave them.”

Eddie swallowed hard, but nodded. “Yes. Yes. Fuck. Yes we—we have to go. We have to go down there. Fucking go.”

“Hold on,” Richie said, and Eddie did, although he had never let go. One hand gripped the side of the ship, the other remained on Richie’s thigh, squeezing hard enough that it would leave fingerprint brushes that Eddie would fuss over later if they even fucking survived, if they could get down to the planet, if they could get _out_ of this. Richie didn’t hesitate, clearing their course, and spinning the pod down to the planet.

They were close to KN-1-3-9, but not close enough to be safe from fire. Richie twirled the craft through the night sky, spinning in circles until up and down were meaningless, until it was impossible to tell where the Dauntless was, where the Mirror Ship was, where the other pods were. All he could see was the pods falling down to the planet and where on the surface he could land. Little mountain ranges, lush vegetation. He could pretty much land anywhere but the closer to the other crafts, the better.

“Can you try to comm Bev for me, before we are out of transmission range?” Richie asked, and Eddie wrenched the hand not bruising Richie’s thigh to the controls.

A moment of silence stretched through the pod, Eddie tapping furiously on the console, breaths still harsh and shallow as he chanted, like a prayer, _Kaspbrak to Marsh, Kaspbrak to Marsh. Kaspbrak to Marsh, Kaspbrak to Marsh,_ voice choked with tears.

“Go Kaspbrak,” Marsh’s voice rang through their communicators now, and Richie let out a gasping sob, hot tears pouring down his cheeks anew.

“Bev, Bev, fuck—someone got shot down, they were trying to land, but they’re probably injured. Eds and I are going down to the planet. Don’t follow, I repeat—“

But Richie did not get to finish his sentence, hurtling the pod into a spiral as he tried to avoid a direct shot from the Mirror Ship. Instead, the shot grazed his side of the pod and Eddie screamed, or yelled, or cried. The last things Richie felt was the pod being knocked off its course, the metal side of the pod crushing into Richie’s arm until the skin broke, Eddie’s hand on his thigh, and Richie’s head hitting the glass of the pod, before he lost consciousness.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie thought, bordering on hysterics, that Richie was made of stronger stuff than flesh and bone, that maybe his love of the stars gave him a dose of luck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note the POV switch. Warnings for blood, descriptions of injuries and field medical treatment, including references to needles and blood transfusions, emotional distress.

_ Stardate 2250.134 | 2200 hours _

Eddie thought, hoped, he was trapped in a hellish nightmare, that none of this was real, that the blood on his hands and his clothes and his face was simply a dry, cracked nightmare. The blood wasn't his—it never was—except for small, scabbing lacerations on his face and arms, cuts he needed to treat but were low priority since their pod crashed into the surface of KN-1-3-9.

His breaths still ripped from his throat like screams, harsh pants, a sharp metallic tang filling his mouth on each exhale. He tried to slow his breathing as he crouched down to the river. The water was crystal clear, reflecting the deep cerulean of the evening sky but clean enough that every pebble in the riverbed was visible. He dipped his hands into the water, cool but not icy, and watched as he stained the river red for several long moments. He scrubbed his hands together, first his palms, between his fingers, his thumb, the back of his hands, the blood caked under his short fingernails, rubbing in the water until his skin was pink and raw, then moving up to scrub harder at his wrists.

He left his hands in the later long after the blood was gone, enjoying how it trickled through his fingers, skin growing accustomed to the temperature. The river flowed slow, bubbling over the rocks lining the river. It was shallow here, and Eddie made the quick decision to undress, to try to remove the caked on blood from his clothes, to scrub the parts of his body where blood seeped through, staining his skin.

He lowered himself, body aching, into the river, letting out a sigh of relief as the water trickled over his legs first, then his torso, water level barely hitting above his navel. He glanced behind himself, where he had set up “camp”—as much as a crashed shuttle, a makeshift shelter, an unconscious physicist, and a raided med kit could be called a “camp”. For the first time in hours, Richie laid still, breathing steadily.

It couldn't be a dream. He remembered how it started, could retrace every step he made, every long minute. It was only hours since he was in Richie's room, telling him he believed him. Richie stared at him like he was the only person in the universe. At least, the only person in their universe. A moment of quiet before, quite literally, worlds collided.

He could not stop thinking about the crash, about the hours of adrenaline-fuelled attempts to keep Richie alive.

The moments after the pod was struck were fuzzy. He remembered screaming until his throat was raw, hot tears pouring down his face as he tried to take control of the vessel, to remember the simulations like he had not had a panic attack before and after each one, scraping by with a pass and a cautionary note in his file each time. He tried to navigate them near the crash sites of the other ships but the pod was damaged, the steering unsynchronized. The landing was rough, Richie’s unconscious body sagging against him as the pod bounced twice, then ground to a halt.

Eddie did not have time to panic, though. No rest for the wicked, he supposed, although he never quite did anything that earned today.

Eddie wrenched the pod door open, not risking moving Richie until he retrieved the med kit from behind their seats. Richie’s left arm was trapped in mangled metal, his head bleeding steadily from where he hit the pod glass, and a piece of the ship lodged firmly, deep, in his right leg, only centimetres from where Eddie had gripped it for the majority of their short flight.

The med kit was not enough for surgery, not the kind Richie needed, but other options were few and far between. Eddie had watched the Dauntless fall to the planet surface, but it landed several days’ travel away by foot. There was no way to retrieve the appropriate medical equipment on time, nor could Eddie transport his prone body across the planet surface.

So instead, Eddie pulled Richie from the wreckage, using the laser of his multitool to cut through the metal. It took all of his strength—adrenaline burning in his veins, lava pulsing down flow trails—to lower Richie’s body onto the soft, slightly damp ground, only a sheet from the med kit as a barrier. Eddie’s ever-steady hands trembled, scissors from the med kit in hand, as he cut through Richie’s regulation uniform. Already bruises had bloomed across his torso, his legs, his arms, but the bleeding was the worst of it. Eddie thought, hysterical at the time, that even if Richie did not bleed out, he would die a slow, painful death from infection.

The arm crushed in the ship was relatively intact—several lacerations, none deep enough to be fatal if treated quickly, but bleeding heavily nonetheless. The arm was definitely broken in at least one place, and Richie’s shoulder had been wrenched viciously out of its socket. Eddie’s first order of business was stopping the bleeding. The med kit had a dermal regenerator, but it couldn’t do the heavy lifting he needed. His protoplaser would have to do the trick—undamaged in the landing and firmly stored in the belt Richie never stopped laughing at. If he could see it then, Eddie thought, Richie still would have laughed, even bleeding out on the verdant, grassy plains of an unfamiliar planet. It might have even made it funnier to him.

Eddie started with his arms, where the bleeding was worst, flicking the protoplaser to medium, not wanting to overwhelm the tool before he got to the worst injury. He wiped the blood pouring from the wounds with fresh, wispy gauze from the medkit while sealing them, watching his skin stitch back together under the tool's beam. He tried to sop most of the blood with gauze, but he couldn't risk using too much of it when there was still a fragment of their shuttle he had to pull out of Richie's leg. Instead the blood poured down over Richie's arm, onto the sheet, pooling at Eddie's knees and soaking through his pants where he crouched over Richie. The arm took too much time to heal, but Richie's quickened breath grew steadier as the wounds sealed.

Eddie had needed a break here, just a moment to breathe, to evaluate, a hand dropping to Richie's wrist on his uninjured arm to monitor his pulse. Weak, shallow, struggling to pump blood through his body, and it would only get worse once he pulled the shrapnel from his leg, a dam opening.

Richie was still unconscious, so he held off on trying to locate the fractures in his arm for a moment, lower priority. He made quick work of the dislocated arm, one bloodied hand on each side of his shoulder, biting the inside of his cheek as he popped it back into its socket. Richie's face screwed up, lips twisted and brow furrowed, but he did not wake yet. The head wound, still bleeding, was next. As far as he could tell, Richie’s skull had not cracked—small victories—but a bleeding head wound was only ever the tip of a traumatic brain injury-shaped iceberg. His unconsciousness boded poorly for his condition.

As if on cue, Richie’s eyes had opened then, bleary, unfocussed, red. He was mumbling, words unintelligible, not forming sentences at first, but at least he was awake. Eddie tried to talk to him as he turned to the worst of Richie’s injuries—the large piece of the escape pod that had impaled his right thigh.

When he pulled the fragment from Richie’s leg, blood gushing from the wound, Richie screamed and screamed and screamed, calling out for Stan, for Bev, for Eddie. Eddie—barely composed—assured him in hushed tones that he was here, that Stan and Bev were fine, even though he could not say for sure. He watched both of their pods descend to the planet’s surface, one with smoke billowing in its wake but still being steered, and one that appeared to be in free-fall. They landed, but likely too far away for a call for help. He would not dare try to comms until later, until just before his dip in the river, only to find that they were fried. He had to stop the bleeding first.

Richie slipped in and out of consciousness as Eddie worked on his thigh, bleeding so much that Eddie was certain he would die there, on the mossy ground of an unfamiliar planet, in Eddie’s arms. The debris had penetrated deep into his leg, only stopping when it hit his femur, leaving a gaping hole just over three inches in diameter in his leg that the overburdened protoplaser struggled to close on its highest setting. Missing the femoral artery was good, but not enough.

A linear fracture split his femur where the tip of the shrapnel had hit, a thin line, only an inch long. It would be painful but tolerable. He could even walk on it in a few days, although the same could not be said for the nerve damage from the hole in his leg. If he survived it at all, Eddie thought wildly then, his pulse growing increasingly thready as the blood oozed from the wound.

It took nearly thirty minutes to seal the wound—the available equipment not enough to repair the internal damage—and it took another hour before Eddie was satisfied that the wound would not reopen. After the bleeding finally stopped (although every time Eddie blinked, the image was there—a gaping thigh wound, pools of blood, blood seeping into the ground beneath them, soaking the thighs of his regulation pants, running down his hands), Richie's pulse was weak. He was no longer shifting in his sleep but had slipped into something deeper, something dangerous. He needed blood fast.

Richie might call it the machinations of the universe but for Eddie it was dumb luck, dumb fucking luck that Richie's blood type was AB+ (the sluttiest blood type, Richie had called it during his physical, making Eddie roll his eyes). What it meant was that the field transfusion kit was not useless, Eddie pulling gloves on over his blood-soaked hands, the situation feeling too dire to pause, running disinfectant over his cubital fossa before sliding the donor needle into the thin skin, careful, precise, hands steady again.

He stayed knelt on the ground over Richie, left arm suspended high above his body to let gravity do its work. Using the pump would have been faster, but would have required both hands, and he wanted to carefully monitor how much blood he was donating. The blood loss volume suggested he needed almost four units ( _ fatal fatal fatal _ Eddie screamed inside his head) more than he could give. He would try for two units, given slowly, time for him to monitor any potential loss of consciousness, time for him to make sure he would still be awake to monitor Richie's condition. 

During the transfusion, he slowly, carefully, cleaned and wrapped the wounds in large, fresh bandages, layering gauze and dressing over the thigh wound first, then the smaller arm lacerations. Richie mumbled the whole time, occasionally slipping into sentences but mostly babbled nonsense, and once, in a brutally wrecked voice that made Eddie more determined, whispering  _ just leave me here _ .

Eddie finally administered antibiotics and morphine, finally identified the fractures in his arm (two, one needing a splint), finally immobilized the arm in a sling, slow, careful, occasionally needing his second hand to steady the motions. Richie quickly settled into a solid, deep sleep.

After that it was just waiting. Hours of waiting, of watching, of monitoring. Richie experienced no adverse reaction to the transfusion while he slept, even as Eddie increased the flow rate, but it still took almost four hours to get two fresh units pumping through his body, and Eddie was shaky, dizzy, near fainting when he finally ended the transfusion.

Eddie sat by his side, unable to stop trembling, for an hour. He kept an eye on his vitals as he cut the rest of Richie’s clothing off, leaving him in dark black boxers, then wiped him clean of blood. He thought, hysterical still, that Richie was made of stronger stuff than flesh and bone, that maybe his love of the stars gave him a dose of luck, because his heartbeat strengthened and his blood pressure stabilized. By the end of the hour, if not for the bandages and the heavy bruising, one may have mistaken Richie as having fallen into a pleasant, dreaming sleep in the middle of a lush green field.

He did not know how Richie was alive, but he was. He was. He needed surgery, a CT scan, and weeks of rehabilitation. Eddie could not determine the extent of the head trauma, not without a better scan and a conversation with Richie.

Darkness fell over the clearing as the sun ducked behind distant, mossy cliffs. He was not sure how long he had been standing in the river, retracing the day’s events for the some desperate sign that he would wake up in his room, on the Dauntless, preparing to spend the day with Richie, to make sure he ate and drank water, instead of mainlining coffee the whole day. His fingers pruned and Eddie rushed to wash himself. The river ran red again as he dropped deeper into the river, water rushing up over his chest, his neck, his face. Richie's blood leached from his skin, water pinkish and muddy for a moment before running clear again. Eddie finally crawled out of the river, shivering in his underwear, leaving his soaked clothes flat on the riverbed to dry.

He was still woozy from the transfusion, head light, each step dizzying, but  he day felt sharp, like each second Eddie was reliving Bev’s voice on the comms, the impact from the Mirror Ship’s fire, the spiralling of the Dauntless first and the pod second, Richie shoving him into the pod because he knew—they both did—that Eddie would not survive otherwise. Other moments were blurred. He was not sure how he got them landed, except that it was bumpy. He was not sure how long it took to extract Richie from the rubble, how long he had bled, how long Eddie had sobbed as he tried to close the wounds. 

He was a fucking professional, he had thought. A trauma surgeon. He treated patients in Klingon war zones. He never treated anyone after something like this, where he was immobilized in fear, where he would have died on the Dauntless if not for Richie. The day was raw and scraped over Eddie’s fears and anxieties like a live wire.

Although the evening air was warm, sickly even as it crawled over his skin, Eddie continued to shiver as he crossed back to where Richie laid, still sound asleep. Eddie stared down at him, watching for a moment, water still sluicing down his body, dripping from his elbows.

For the first time in hours, Eddie took a moment to breathe—slow, deep breaths, pulling from his belly.  _ In-hold-out-hold-in-hold-out-hold-in-hold-out-hold _ until his head cleared, until he could look at his hands and not see blood on them. He turned towards the vessel, mint condition when they stepped in and unrecognizable by the time he pulled Richie out. Blood stained the seats, the console, the part of the glass door where Richie’s head collided before he fell unconscious. Eddie clambered over the console, body protesting, and dug around behind the seats for supplies. Every escape pod had the essentials—food, water, extra clothing, a level-two medical kit. Better than a level 1, but not what Eddie needed. He could hardly fault it, though, as Richie was alive. Stable.

Eddie pulled a sweater from the clothing kit over his torso, too large, too warm for the conditions. He would swap it with Richie once he was awake, but he did not think he could lift Richie enough now without hurting him. The sweater stopped mid-thigh, and rather than locate pants, Eddie wobbled down to the ground, shuffling close to Richie’s sleeping body.

He had watched Richie sleep before. Spending days with Richie nearly guaranteed it. He never slept in his bed, however, and he never slept soundly. It was always brief naps at bad angles—on his desk in the office, leaning back in his chair in the room, half-upright on his couch, leaning against Eddie’s shoulder in the mess hall—and he always jolted out of sleep like he was embarrassed to be caught, like he was not allowed the rest he so desperately needed, or like he was struggling to escape a dream.

There on the soft, mossy ground of the planet, on the bloodied sheet, wearing nothing but underwear, Richie slept solidly, his chest rising and falling evenly, his eyes moving rapidly under his lids. He looked so calm. He looked good. Colour had returned to his body, his temperature was good, pulse strengthening as time passed. All that was left was angry red gashes hidden under bundled bandages, and the purples bruises mottling his body. Eddie groaned as he tried to fold his own legs, crossing them, seeing clearly the bruises smattering across his own legs.

Eddie sighed, reaching into the med kit for the dermal regenerator. His protoplaser had served him well, had helped him drag Richie from the brink of death. He did not need it to heal bruises and abrasions. He flicked the regenerator on, loud whir piercing the evening air.

He took care of Richie’s bruises first, trailing his fingers over his skin as the bruises faded, first to blue, then to green, then yellow, before fading back into skin. The magic of augmented cellular regeneration.

It was only now, Richie’s body still under him, the regenerator buzzing as it slowly healed the bruises (too slowly, his hand itched for his overburdened protoplaser) that Eddie saw the light, long scar on Richie’s torso, starting below his right nipple and slashing across his chest, nearly down to his opposite hip. He knew it was from the Gaia, just as he knew the lighter scars on Richie’s arms, the ones on his uninjured thigh, were from the Gaia. He had seen the medical reports, he had seen the photos of the injuries, violent, bloody injuries with no story except pain, except blanket pages on an incident report that only read  _ Richard Wentworth Tozier, injured on away mission. Status: Alive. _ The word  _ alive _ had never seemed so daunting, so insufficient.

Now, however, under Eddie’s shaking hands, his gaze that searched for lesser injuries he had missed in the flurry of blood and debris and exposed bone, alive was more than enough. It was all he needed.

Once all of Richie’s visible injuries were healed, leaving only slightly raw skin behind, Eddie turned to his own, absently waving the wand of the regenerator over his own legs and arms, haphazard, missing several of the lesser bruises on purpose, spending extra time at the mottled bruise that surrounded the transfusion site. He always bruised easily.

When he was mostly healed he dropped the regenerator at his side and leaned towards Richie again. All the adrenaline from earlier had seeped out of his body, leaving him shaky, exhausted, limbs weak. He struggled to roll Richie onto his side, just enough to tug the bloodied sheet out from under him, balling it up and tossing it aside, before easing him back down onto his back.

He used the last of his strength to move Richie’s body again, this time with disinfectant wipes in hand, wiping the last of the dried blood off his sides where it pooled on the blanket, on the ground. Limbs shaking now from exertion, exhaustion blooming into a deep ache in his chest, Eddie flopped back onto the grass, crossing his legs. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his face down into his hands, hands that were rubbed clean and raw but were still heavy with the memory of hot blood pooling over his skin.

He had not thought he could cry again, not after earlier, where he screamed his throat ragged and cried his eyes dry. The weight of the day settled heavier on his shoulders and he thought about how small of a thing it felt to save Richie’s life, how it felt like he could never do enough. All he could think of was Richie on the Bridge, before the Dauntless went down. He had never seen him scared. He always had a swagger about him, an energy. It was often nervous, occasionally unbearable, but ever-present. When Richie saw the Mirror Ship, he was frozen, he was  _ petrified _ .

But when the Dauntless started to move, looping through space, Richie was able to jump back into action and Eddie’s fear consumed him, immobilized as the ship swerved, only steadied by Richie’s large hands, first holding him upright, then pressing him down into the chair. The same large hand coming up to his chin, forcing him to look at the screen, giving him a task to distract him from the paralysis of his worst anxieties coming together—that he would die, alone, unloved, in space. He did not feel that when Richie twisted his chin toward the screen, when he leapt to his feet to pull Richie off the floor.

Eddie’s sobs started small, sending light tremors through his torso. He thought of dragging Richie off the bridge, how it was  _ his fault _ that Richie never got to say goodbye to Stan, to Bev, how he had thought then that Richie would never forgive him if that was the end. And then, on the elevator, Richie had wordlessly pulled Eddie into his arms, close, into his shoulder, one hand pressed firmly to Eddie’s neck, keeping him steady even as the artificial grav fluctuated. He thought maybe Richie could forgive him for ruining his goodbye. He thought maybe Richie would be too busy blaming himself.

There, in the pod room, Richie had acted like it was not a choice, like Eddie was never going to get in a pod alone, like he never would have let it happen. He barely let Eddie gasp out his words before he shoved him into the too-small pod. He never stopped talking, reassuring him, as the pod hurtled through space, as Richie swerved to avoid the overpowered weapons of the Mirror Ship.  _ Hey. Hey. Eds. Eds, honey, please. _ The words that snapped Eddie into action still rang in his ears, Richie firm but tender, asking Eddie for help, not telling him what to do. The first time Richie had called him Eds it annoyed him. Now he could only think of it in that desperate, gentle, pleading voice. How could he hate a nickname given so tenderly?

All Eddie had done was stop the bleeding. Richie had saved him over and over again—pushing him into the chair to man the shields, in his arms in the elevator, in the pod room, in the pod itself. Even once Richie was knocked unconscious, Eddie thought he had saved him. He didn’t know if he could have flown the pod for himself. He didn’t think he could have. He thought maybe he would simply have given up, curled into a ball, and closed his eyes. Richie, bleeding and crushed in the metal of the ship, gave Eddie the only reason he needed to pilot the vessel clumsily down to the planet’s surface.

Eddie felt as if he was separate from his body, as if he was watching himself from above, sobs loud, uncontrollable, wracking his entire body, hands shaking against his face as he tried to catch his tears.

“God, Eds, if you wanted me naked you could have just asked, no need to crash the escape pod as a cover story.”

Eddie snapped up, face glistening with tears, swollen and red, eyes puffy, to where Richie was lying, eyes half-open, a smile curling on his lips. Eddie tried to compose himself, but only managed to gasp out a wet-sounding  _ Rich, fuck _ , before another sob overtook his voice.

Richie raised his right hand from his side, even as Eddie barked at him through choked sobs to stop moving, to keep still, not to risk reopening his wounds. Richie ignored him and raised his hand to touch Eddie’s face, to cup his jaw.

“You’re an ugly crier,” he said, voice fond, face twitching into a smile.

“Well, you’re an ugly bleeder,” Eddie said, hiccuping as he felt his chest relax. He titled his head, leaning against Richie’s hand, allowing himself a moment of intimacy. Richie started to laugh, but grimaced, choking out only a pained sound.

“Are you okay?” Richie asked, closing his eyes again.

“I’m not the one with his arm broken in two spots, a traumatic brain injury, and a giant fucking hole in his thigh.”

Richie  _ hmm _ ’d, eyes glancing briefly down to the bandages, first on his arms, then his thigh, lingering over the sling. “I didn’t ask if I was okay. I feel great. You must have drugged me up pretty good.”

Eddie let out a wet laugh. “The good stuff. How does your head feel?”

Richie shrugged, but grimaced at whatever pain shot down his arm. “Hurts, but it’s dull. I feel dizzy. I feel like I need more sleep.”

Eddie nodded. “Your condition is stable. More sleep would be good.”

Richie’s hand was still curled around his jaw, large fingers brushing over his cheekbone, along his jawline, tickling his neck. His thumb brushed over Eddie’s bottom lip and lingered there, tugging it down just enough to press between his lips. Richie was tired. Richie was tired and chock full of morphine and the touch was so easy, so intimate, but all Eddie could think of was  _ blood, shrapnel, broken bones, dying, dying, dying _ .

“You saved my life,” Richie said, voice tender this time, eyes wide and sincere, cutting through Eddie’s train of thought. Eddie felt uncomfortable under the stare, so earnest, too appreciative. Then his lips quirked up again. “You flew the pod without killing us?”

The question was a welcome reprieve from Richie’s sincerity, although he had nearly killed them. “In only the loosest sense of flying. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow. Get some more sleep.”

Richie smiled at him again, open and easy, before his eyes drifted shut once more. “My brave Eds.”

Eddie swallowed around the lump in his throat. “I didn’t feel very brave.”

Richie, eyes still closed, tugged Eddie down onto the mossy ground. He wanted to protest, but Richie’s grip was firm, tugging at Eddie until he settled down at his side. He pulled him until Eddie’s head was on his uninjured shoulder, one hand resting on Richie’s bare, healed chest, pinky trailing over the vicious scar from the Gaia. Richie tried to pull him closer, but Eddie kept a healthy distance between their legs, avoiding the gaping hole in Richie’s thigh that was barely holding, that Eddie had worked so hard to seal. He was not about to reopen the wound for—for whatever this was. The therapeutic power of human contact.

Eddie had not wanted to sleep, but as he laid on Richie’s chest, head moving with each inhale, each exhale, he felt the exhaustion that pooled in his core spread through his limbs. His eyes ached from crying, his throat still tasted like blood, his entire body ached from the crash, from the adrenaline. He was exhausted, and Richie’s body was warm, so close to his, arm wrapped around him like in the elevator. The hot and sticky evening did little to help the drowsiness. Eddie reached blindly around himself to set his tricorder to monitor Richie’s condition, deciding he could spare a few hours. He could help Richie better if he just got some sleep.

“You’re braver than you think, honey,” Richie said, voice thick with fatigue, and it was the last thing Eddie heard before he too collapsed into a deep, dreamless slumber.


End file.
